Hi Steve, one thing that can help to make smoother surfaces is to not try to do a loft or network that tries to use a tightly curved boundary directly within the initial surface creation. That can sort of apply a lot of pressure onto the generated surface and that will tend to make for more ripples and bunching in it.

Instead try to build something with an extended more rectangular like layout and then get the curved boundary by trimming that surface. See here for an example:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4059.2

- Michael