[finchOU]

The tutorials will help you. Having said that....here is what I do. In the patrol area...

1. I will patrol across the path of likely ship travel. Basically if it looks like the enemy ships are travelling east west (aka the Baltic patrol area), I would patrol north south. This in general makes it more likely you will run across more ships. Take a look at the SH5 map and look at where merchant lanes are.

2. Hydrophone. Use it. In the patrol area I dive below 30 meters every 2 hours to check for contacts. I also check it before i change direction...or more specifically i only change course after a hydrophone check. Make sure you do three things when you do sound checks. 1. Man the station and do it yourself (the AI is piss poor at detecting ships you can hear on your hydrophone). 2. Turn the volume knob up (mouse over it and roll your mouse wheel....it defaults to low everytime you reload your save....so you have to do this every single time). 3. Do two full sweeps very slowly. Each sweep should take more than a minute....you'd be surprised what you miss if you go fast. If you do hear a Merchant ....surface at full or flank for 15 mins directly at the sound contact. Submerge and listen again to see what kind of relative motion the contact has (aka how far did it drift from your bow after 15 mins) and take an intercept vector.