a system for correcting for a time of flight delay of a drop of ink from an inkjet printhead . the inventive system includes a first mechanism for scanning the printhead along a first axis at a first velocity . a control circuit , responsive to inkjet timing signals , causes the printhead to eject ink onto a media to create a test pattern thereon as the printhead is scanned along the first axis . a sensor optically sense the test pattern and provides a time of flight dependent phase signal in response thereto . this signal is processed to provide time of flight delay corrected inkjet timing signals for the first velocity in response to the phase signal . in a particular implementation , the processor is adapted to add an additional delay to the corrected timing signals to correct for curvature .