[F8] sonar, circles, hittest, and actionscript

I need to make a “sonar” effect in actionscript, but am encountering a whole host of problems, was wondering if anyone can help!

The sonar is an expanding circle from a centre point. I need to make the circle and the expansion happen in actionscript so that the size and speed can be varied. Is there a simple plug and play method of doing this?

Being a sonar, it needs collision detection objects within its expanding circle. Can this be done using the shapeflag method of hitTest?

Thanks,

Steve