Raymarine Dragonfly?

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PaulNBriannaLynn

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Is anyone using a the raymarine dragonfly sonar/gps?

We were at the Anacortes boat show over the weekend, and a Raymarine guy was in the dealer tent. I was talking to him about our C80 system, and I do really like the setup except for it tends to lose track of the bottom occassionally. I know Im in deep water, and the depth will read 22' for example.

This usually happens at the worst times, like when Im searching for the best place to set a shrimp or crab pot, or lower the downriggers at the end of a ledge. He told us that it has to do with the transducer in really deep water picking up on different thermocline layers, etc.

He had us convinced that we need this new sonar/gps. I have to admit I was really impressed with the detail of the screen shots. It has a much stronger transducer and uses some new technology called CHIRP downvision.

I don't really need a second GPS, but I think we would really like to have a better sonar and this thing looks pretty amazing. Is anyone using this model, and if so how do you like it. Is there any other options out there for curing my transducer/sonar problem? Thanks!
 
Almost all of the fish finder models have CHIRP now; One of the better explanations and a good discussion is at this forum on THT:

http://www.thehulltruth.com/marine-elec ... ained.html

Garmin, Lowrance, Simrad, Furuno, Hummingbird all have new excellent Depth finders--and they all have CHIRP, Downscan and side scan.

Do some search and see what the general fishing population feels about the RayMarine DragonFlly. (There is a 7" unit which was recently introduced) There seem to be more folks buying some of the other brands, but that may be for alternative reasons--the quality of RayMarine products has improved since FLIR purchased the company several years ago.

It is possible that an upgrade in your transducer would also help with the current unit you have. Often the deptsounders come with a cheaper transducer, and AirMar has a better transducer in their stable.

For example the 740s Garmin comes with a transducer, but the P66 from AirMar is better.

In any case, certainly the new CHIRP, with downscan are a real revolution in fish finders.
 
So I talked to the raymarine rep and others at the seattle boat show about the dragon fly. It would be far better then what you have for fishing. Not saying that what you have could not be made better. A transducer is the limiting factor for a lot of units. And to be clear Air mar is, I believe, the only supplier to all the companies. They rename the units most of the time but your base unit, other then chirp units, has always been the P66 no matter the maker of the unit ( 150 bucks) . The next step up is something in the tm 260 or 270 which will run you a grand plus. That's quite a jump in price .

A Dragonfly runs about $700 and has better separation then your unit with a p66. Also chirp is not down scan, as it has been explained to me. The benefit of RM chirp over Lowrance down scan is range. I just attended a seminar on Saturday with the lowrance rep. I do believe that down scan and side scan has a use in salt water but is used wrong and set wrong by most people. Best setting is FRESHWATER. It has to do with the depth not the type of water. Rm chirp has a range of 2000 ft. lowrance side scan is only about 200 and 400 on downscan ( from memory)

So what should you do? I would get the dragonfly as a second unit for fishing mounted in the back someplace. Or get a new unit in the front with chirp and a pad in a water proof case for the back deck. All the new MFD except the hds7 elite and the dragonfly, have the ability to use a pad thru wifi as a second station and have full control of the MFD up from to included radar and auto pilot.
 
Tom,

Correct the CHRIP does not equal down scan. The DragonFly (and many of the other units) have both down scan and CHRIP.

From the RayMarine literature:
Dragonfly includes two discrete CHIRP sonar channels.

The first is an ultra-high resolution DownVision channel and the second is a high-resolution fish targeting sonar channel.

View each sonar channel independently or switch to dual sonar split screen mode for the ultimate underwater intelligence.
Dragonfly Dual Sonar
Click to expand...

The factory supplied Garmin transducer is not as good quality as the P66. (I don't know who is making the factory transducer for Garmin--it could be AirMar or could be a Chinese company) You can buy the factory Garmin transducer for most of the 4XX,5XX, 7XX series for $70 to $90. The P 66 is $115 to $160 depending on seller. I recently bought a 740s which comes with the same transducer as the 541 I have aboard now, but will be "upgrading" to the P 66.
 
Thank you guys for the advice! That gives me a couple of options to think about.

I was just about to order one of these online, as a secondary, except last night we had roto-rooter out and discovered we have a crushed drain running out from our basement that is causing flooding down there :shock: Gonna have to hire an excavator. Ill have to wait a little while before buying any more toys. We did ok last year, it just was a real inconvenience.

I really like the idea of using a tablet in the back of the boat.
 
re reading your problem I think that you can fix it with our buying anything. One, make sure your transducer is clean. Second do not run your finder in Auto. Play with the power and the gain. You can shoot thru ( or should be able to ) temp layers with more power but you have to turn up your gain. You will have a cluttered screen but that is not always a bad idea. when setting pots you just want to see the bottom and dont care about what is between right? so turn the power up all the way. Give that a try . I might be selling a raymarine with a p66 when I update.
 
One other thought to Tom's excellent advice, is that the transducers can become weaker with time. They are basically ultrasonic transmitters. All sorts of things can happen to them, from heat, being run out of the water, minor water intrusion, and just age.
 
That big piece of drift wood I hit with the transducer last season couldnt have been good for it.

Ill mess around with the settings next time we're out and hope for a little better perfomance in getting through the thermal layers. Actually Ill have the wife mess with it, she's alot better with technology than I am
 
Well, you ask the question, and along comes Panbo today in his blog, about a new Elite CHIRP series from Lowrance, with a comparison and discussion in his column about the various inexpensive CHIRP depth sounders, including the DragonFly, GARMIN and of course Lowrance

What is particularly interesting about this Lowrance product is that they claim to be able to use one of the inexpensive "skimmer" transducers as a CHIRP transducer. Since these are dual frequency--and they are running CHIRP between the frequencies--with some user input control.

Panbo:

http://www.panbo.com/archives/2014/03/l ... ge_on.html

At the end of the Blog, under comments Ben Ellison (Panbo) comments:

I was wrong to qualify Raymarine's DownVision as "purportedly" CHIRP assisted and I just crossed out the word. The Dragonfly really is broadcasting two ranges of frequencies from Ray's own custom designed CHIRP transducer, though the specification are oddly vague about it: http://goo.gl/yo28ym
…………………………………...

At any rate, when the inexpensive Dragonfly came out with vague specs and no user control over the frequencies used, some people (especially competitors) questioned if it was using "real" CHIRP.

Today there's plenty of evidence that Raymarine is using the CHIRP term properly, starting with the impressive user screen captures linked to above. Dragonfly doesn't offer two DownVision frequencies and yet seems able to capture high frequency detail while also seeing deeper and at higher speed, all of which CHIRP could help with.

Finally, while Dragonfly appeared when all other CHIRP was in big expensive devices, now Lowrance and Garmin also seem able to use CHIRP tech in smaller devices with modest transducers. "Cheap CHIRP" isn't meant to sound dismissive; it's a good thing.

Posted by: Ben at March 27, 2014 2:32 PM
Click to expand...

Here is a video from Lowrance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... ekHn8XpQSg
 
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