  Variable OH/IR stars are Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars with an
optically thick circumstellar envelope that emit strong OH 1612 MHz emission.
They are commonly observed throughout the Galaxy but also in the LMC and SMC.
Hence, the precise inference of the distances of these stars will ultimately
result in better constraints on their mass range in different metallicity
environments. Through a multi-year long-term monitoring program at the Nancay
Radio telescope (NRT) and a complementary high-sensitivity mapping campaign at
the eMERLIN and JVLA to measure precisely the angular diameter of the
envelopes, we have been re-exploring distance determination through the
phase-lag method for a sample of stars, in order to refine the
poorly-constrained distances of some and infer the currently unknown distances
of others. We present here an update of this project.
