Loran?... what the Hell is it and why was is shut down?-gctid351247

[Guest]

One of the boats I'm looking at has it, but now I hear it's obsolete... so it doesn't matter. I thought Loran was a sort of radar so that shows what I know.

Is the system no longer in use?

[Nikko]

Older system (80's -early 90's) that used radio triangulation to calculate and display Lat and Long. You could then plot those on a paper chart and figure out where your were.

System had it's flaws - a lot of them actually. But sneaking home on a dark wet foggy night in the middle of no-where after three weeks out working the boat - it was nice to be able to use something in conjunction with radar to know where you were.

GPS made it redundant - it's still around, but barely. Pull the stuff out - use the dash space for something you'll use. And no - it's not worth anything :greedy_dollars:

[Guest]

Here is a link with more info.

[Go Aweigh2452]

LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) is actually a form of GPS but is ground/earth based. Sends out signals that are interpreted by your LORAN-C system to triangulate where you are. It was not very accurate depending on where on the earth you were but it had the advantage of not relying on satellites which everyone knew back in the 60's/70's they would be all blown up by the bad guys in space... I used that and LORAN A when I flew P-3's in the 70's... We'd match an oscilloscope signal with two others and plot them on a chart. Best fix was about 3nm... The "newer" systems of the 80's would actually give you Lat/Long which you would then plot on the chart for a fix... Very slow and cumbersome until the 90's when you could chart it as a DR (dead Reconing) position and know within a 1.nm where you were without plotting on a chart...

It needs to go away... however, there are people trying to resurrect the system as a back up to GPS...

As has been said, the system is worthless and would not be worth the cost of shipping on Ebay...

[boatworkfl]

I liked loran, most of my good fishing location are still in loran, the loran to gps conversions are not all that accurate, I have had to search the area and then hit save on the gps.

Loran was shut down to save 3.5 million a year.

[Jeffw]

Pretty sure they quit transmitting a year or two ago...

It always seemed odd to me going from here up to Las Vegas on US 95, seeing the USCG Loran station just south of Searchlight, NV...

[Guest]

http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2010/02/coast-guard-terminates-loran-c-broadcast/

Here you go!

[2850Bounty]

Mike, IMO, any Loran system today should probably NOT count as a Navigational system. If done politely and gingerly, this may be a barginning tool for a buyer.

If the owner thinks that his Loran system has a value, you may try offering it back to him.

Just say'n!

.

[dmcb]

Just look at as an outdated system that no longer has service.

Actually its a negitive to have one on a boat. You have to plug the holes when you remove it.

[2850Bounty]

Good point on removing it and plugging the holes! Perhaps a labor of love, but none-the-less something that has to be done.

[Guest]

2850Bounty wrote:
Good point on removing it and plugging the holes! Perhaps a labor of love, but none-the-less something that has to be done.

Loran had its day. it brought me home many dark nights with low clouds and IFR conditions. The loran system was very accurate from the mid 90's on. The only problem with flying IFR with it was you would lose the signal in stormy condition when you really needed it.:drama

Bob

[706jim]

I was one of the last Loran C users in my area. When I bought a GPS for my boat, I ended up with a different boat, but that's another story. Towards the end, I could get a signal only about 50% of the time. And it was totally USELESS in a thunderstorm.

[Go Aweigh2452]

sprint7TW wrote:
Loran had its day. it brought me home many dark nights with low clouds and IFR conditions. The loran system was very accurate from the mid 90's on. The only problem with flying IFR with it was you would lose the signal in stormy condition when you really needed it.:drama

Bob

706jim wrote:
I was one of the last Loran C users in my area. When I bought a GPS for my boat, I ended up with a different boat, but that's another story. Towards the end, I could get a signal only about 50% of the time. And it was totally USELESS in a thunderstorm.

So true. When I flew in the Navy, the weather sometimes kicked our nav system off line and I'd have to use a peroscoptic sextant through the top of the aircraft to find stars and plot our position. Of course during the day we only got a rough position if we had the sun and the moon. It was a big deal when you were hunting subs 1000 miles from the nearest runway... Try getting that fix in thunderstorms in and out of clouds... crazy stuff. But I wouldn't trade those days...

[2850Bounty]

Flight 19 had trouble with Loran also.

[captharv]

I sold and swerviced LORAN during the later 70s and used it aboard my boat from '83 till 2005.

The evolution was:

1 generation used a 3 step method of getting a LORAN Time delay number (TD). With practice, it took about a minute. then you took a seond one from a different secondary. Then plotted the time TDs. on a LORAN chart. very slow, but got you home.

Generation 2 acquired the TDs automatically, but still had to manually plot on chart.

Generation 3, actually plotted the TDs and converted into lat/long. A lot easier

Generation 4 had an early version of a chart plotter, where you could tell it where you wanted to go to and it would guide you. Now, remember this: this was dueing the middle 80s, and that was state of teh art.

About the early 90s GPS took over. the state of teh art allowed using the chart plotting features, and memories of charts and/or nav points of interest.

The research money was spent on improving the GPS un its and making them more user friendly.

However, GPS is jamable; LORAN is not. For land use, LORAN works quite well in the concrete jungles and where there is significant foilage overhang. LORAN required a substantial antenna in comparison, thus maing handheld/pocketsize units practically non-existant.

What LORAN did quite well is: repeatibility. 50' was norm. At that time, GPS was 50 meters/

I used LORAN to dive in the Keys. On wreck, was by itself and not well marked. I could drop my anchor at its bow every time.

Why was LORRAN discontinued? The FAA was using it for aircraft, and a few million was spent updating the transmitters to solid state, and upgrading the time base from micro seconds to nanoseconds. The new upgraded time base, just before shutdown was giving accuracies of a few meters Then, for mostly political reasons, it was shut down

If it wee "brought back", with todays electronics, the accuracy would approach GPS, maybe a bit better.