[en] In ground-based cosmic ray experiments, the equalization of the transit time of signals coming from different parts of the apparatus is of crucial importance for the improvement of the angular resolution and accuracy. In the ARGO-YBJ experiment, this is achieved using the Characteristic Plane Method with conical correction, studied by both Monte Carlo simulation and real data and also checked with manual absolute calibration on a portion of the detector. By introducing conical correction in primary direction reconstruction, the systematics error existing in the off-line calibration with planar fit is successfully removed. Two subsequent construction phases of the detector have been considered: ARGO-42 and ARGO-104. During the calibration of ARGO-104, events with more than 1000 hits and with the core reconstructed inside the carpet were used in order to achieve a good reconstruction of the shower, that is the arrival direction and the core position. The results of the calibration concerning the two configurations, ARGO-42 and ARGO-104, are compared and discussed