What I couldn't manage was setting a circular patrol loop or line, but that's no huge omission. This either means setting them up in the formation editor or launching search missions to points beyond your passive radar range. Here you can select an available air asset, and give it a point to move to. Changing a aircraft loadout in an EC2000 scenario. This is a 1024x768 screendump, less cluttered than 800x600.
Scenarios are always tense.
New contacts appear all the time, either through your active searches or from unexpected directions. Being able to react to these is important. 20 or 30nm from your main ship group is not a pleasant surprise, but Harpoon Classic 97 certainly favours the defender if they're capable of handling the threat. Contacts are not always black and white. You'll usually get vague contacts with diamonds showing possible ranges of positions, with innaccurate target counts.