What is a LORAN?

LORAN is a navigational system which relies on signals from radio transmitters. For much of the second half of the 20th century, this system was in use by navigators all over the world, from casual sailors to national fleets, and it radically increased the reliability of navigational measurements, making ocean travel much safer. This system has largely been displaced by global positioning satellites (GPS) and their associated navigation systems, which are extremely accurate and very affordable. LORAN is a clever abbreviation of long range navigation. The earliest LORAN systems were developed in Britain prior to the Second World War, and the technology was refined at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1940s by researchers for the American military. When the technology was first released, it had a fairly limited range, despite the name, and its use was restricted to the military. Over time, the range and applications of LORAN were expanded, with LORAN-C, which operates in ...  more

LORAN (which is an acronym for Long Range Aid to Navigation) is basically a system utilizing radio frequencies and receivers to plot one's way through the ocean. It can be compared to Latitude/Longitude, but is different in many respects. The numbers that one reads on the LORAN machine are radio freqencies sent out by beacons on shore. One can compare it to the LCD display on your regular music radio. The numbers received are a measure of your distance from the source. When you buy a marine chart, these numbers are plotted on the chart so one can see one's location by comparing the readout on the LORAN machine and the numbers on the chart. On our whale watches we often use the 44 line and the 13 line. They are roughly perpendicular. As the readout of our 44 line decreases, that indicates a southerly movement of our vessel. A decrease in the 13 line indicates an easterly movement. I hope this clears it up slightly. It would be much easier for me to show you in person, so if you're ...  more