In this section we review other electronic aids that are either new or remain options to small-craft navigation. The technologies are not so far reaching as GPS, but nevertheless impressive in the convenience and precision they offer. Before covering new developments, we briefly review Loran, an electronic navigation system we thought was completely replaced by GPS, but there is now a renewed interest in it, especially in Europe. Keep an eye out for eLoran (e for enhanced).
The oldest of all electronic aids is radio direction finding (RDF), which is covered in Chapter 11 in the High Seas Navigation section. Although this is in an entirely different class of electronic navigation, it will long remain a valuable method to know about since it can be applied with an inexpensive pocket radio using commercial AM radio broadcasts. New high-tech developments in communications are covered in Section 12.16 on Marine Radios.
Loran was definitely on the way out as GPS emerged, but with increased concerns about its vulnerability, Loran is getting another look by some. It is worth a few notes here for general knowledge. GPS is still cheaper, more accurate, and easier to use, so if you do not have interest in this historical (or maybe future) aspect of navigation, you can safely skip this short section.
Loran is a land-based navigation system operated by the Coast Guard. It has been in operation (with several upgrades) since World War II. It was intended solely for coastal waters, but it has been used extensively and successfully on inland waters for the past decade and was crucial to the fishing industry until GPS came along. The name derives from long-range navigation, which in some senses is an outdated acronym these days.
The system works by determining lines of position from the observed arrival times of radio signals broadcast simultaneously from two stations several hundred miles apart. The lines of position are hyperbolic curves that trace out across the chart the path of all points with the same arrival-time difference between the two signals. The intersection of two such curves (from one master station coordinated with two slave stations) produces the fix. Programming within the individual Loran units then converts this information to latitude and longitude. The precision of this last step varied among the models and manufacturers and from region to region for the same unit.
Regions are covered by separate groups of four or five stations each. The West Coast from Alaska to California, for example, is covered by three such groups. Positions can be determined up to 1,000 miles from the stations, but the stations themselves are often hundreds of miles inland.
Although Loran measures and computes the same things as GPS (position, COG, SOG, XTE, WCV) and uses waypoints in the same manner, there are still very important differences, and these differences are still only slowly being appreciated by new users of electronic navigation. If you know how to use GPS, as outlined above, you automatically know how to use the functions of Loran—although historically the statement should be reversed; all the convenient user interface design applied to GPS was developed with Loran.
But though the outputs are the same, the accuracy of the data and dependability of its operation are different. Loran has, indeed, a high reproducible accuracy (60 to 100 feet), but it has significantly less intrinsic accuracy. That is, if you store a present position as a waypoint and then travel away from it, the unit will guide you back to that precise point very accurately. But if you compared the latitude and longitude of that location read from the Loran with that read from a large-scale chart, you would find the instrument might be off as much as a couple tenths of a mile. This places limits on its use in confined waters and also on the accuracy and immediacy of its derived data, such as COG and SOG.
There are ways around the intrinsic accuracy problem for position navigation, either by relying on repeated routes that have been directly stored when at the site of each waypoint, or by entering fudge factors to offset the errors for specific locations. But there is no way around its influence on COG and SOG, which, again, is the primary information required for careful navigation.
It takes a Loran unit a minute or two and sometimes longer to figure your COG and SOG, because it must average over a longer period to compensate for its lower position accuracy. If you were sailing at a constant rate, in constant current and constant wind for five minutes, then the COG and SOG it shows will be as accurate as that of GPS. But the moment you turn or the current changes, you will get inaccurate readings on the Loran until things have stabilized for a few minutes. In contrast, GPS takes just a few seconds to detect new motion, although even GPS results (without differential corrections) should also be averaged over at least thirty seconds for reliable speed and course information.
Another drawback with the early Loran was its much higher vulnerability to local electromagnetic noise or static. This is not nearly the problem for small vessel use as it is for larger vessels with engines, fluorescent lights, televisions, and so forth, but it still influences operation in some areas because ambient noise levels in the environment outside of the boat depend on location and time of day. Likewise, electrical storms interfere with Loran but have little influence on GPS. There also are other factors that inhibit the use of Loran that can all be traced to the fixed geometry of the land-based transmitting stations. Many of the problems that arise from these factors can in fact be corrected for by user adjustments, but the vast majority of Loran users, on any size vessel, did not get involved in this level of its operation. GPS, on the other hand, provides what most users want—a true black box, with no required tuning or adjustments.
The 2012 Federal Radionavigation Plan does not mention eLoran, but it is much in the 2013 international navigation news and in professional journals. It is definitely something to keep an eye on.
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