shoran, SHORAN—A short-range navigation system in which two radar signals transmitted by an airplane are intercepted and rebroadcast to the airplane by two ground stations of known positions, with the time that the signals take for their round trips indicating the distance to each station and thus the position of the airplane. The electronic distance-measuring equipment involved in shoran consists of a radio-transmitter/ radio-receiver unit mounted in an aircraft or vessel; two radio-receiver/ radio-transmitter units in fixed locations on the ground, which receive radio pulses from the mobile unit and re-transmit them to the mobile unit; and a unit which takes the difference between time of transmission and time of reception of each pulse and converts this to a distance.

shoran-line crossing—A method of determining distance between two points by flying across the adjoining line.

shoran range—The maximum possible operating distance between shoran aircraft and ground stations as limited by flying height, ground-station elevation, terrain, and Earth curvature.

shoran reduction—The computation process of converting from a shoran distance reading to an equivalent geodetic distance.

shoran triangulation— See triangulation, shoran.

shoran wave path—The path taken by a shoran wave as it travels from a mobile (airborne or shipborne) station to a ground station.

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Source: NSPS “Definitions of Surveying and Related Terms“, used with permission.

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