Raymarine Element 9hv

I have been using a Raymarine Dragonfly 5 pro for this past 5 years on my kayak and have honestly loved every minute of it, it is a superb size for any kayak or boat with plenty of features and great chart options at a very affordable price.

As I am a tackle tart I thought a upgrade was due and I was lucky enough to pick up Raymarine’s latest Element 9hv, this comes in 3 sizes, 7 inch 9 and a massive 12 inch.

My first impression of the unit once out of the box was how well if is put together, another high quality unit from Raymarine.

Anyway onto the fitment on my Jackson Kraken 15.5…….. I hate drilling holes in any kayak and I’m yet to drill a hole in a Jackson as there is so many mounting options on all of there kayaks.
I started off by cutting a small chopping board up and mounting it to the 2 gear tracks on the center hatch lid with a Railblaza gear trac mount kit. I then screwed a Railblaza starport hd to the chopping board with the supplied fitting kit then mounted the fish finder R lock R mount to the starport hd, following this I mounted the bracket of the Element to the Railblaza fish finder mount and then clipped the head unit into place…… start to finish i would say 15-20 mins max, and no holes…….

Once I was happy with the head unit mounting position I then removed the Element and flipped the kraken over to mount the pretty big hv100 transducer for the 3D imaging and side scan, not to mention the new 1.2 megahertz hyper vision downscan that is mind blowing with the detail of what’s below you.
Now don’t judge a book by its cover, Iv done this with the transducer of my dragonfly and it stayed perfectly securely in place for years. I use a marine sealer called stikaflex, add a decent amount of it into the transducer hole that is moulded into all Jackson kayak fishing kayaks and press the transducer into the sealant firmly, place some tape over the transducer to hold it firmly in place until the sealant fully cures…
I normally leave it like this for a couple of days as some areas of the sealer are quite thick and need time to fully cure.
Once cured it’s not going anywhere, tho it is fairly easily removed if need be with a good wiggle and pull.

Next up is powering your unit up, I run all the cables into my center hatch where there is also a Nocqua adventure gear lithium battery, Nocqua provide a superb waterproof connecting kit with there batteries that is market leading, not only is it waterproof but it is also a quick connector and very easy to change batteries over, they also now have a split system so you can hook up two batteries for those long weekends.
I have been using there batteries for a number of years now and can’t fault them in the slightest, these are available in 4.4ah or 10ah for more power.

Next up is powering the unit up and installing the charts card, here in the Ireland my chart of choice is supplied by Navionics. Depending on where your from will depend on what charts you use and Raymarine accepts a wide variety of chart manufacturers cards, more can be found out on there website on this. I have been using navionics charts now for years and absolutely love them, there attention to detail is second to none and they are constantly improving them, not to mention how easy they are to use and understand. They also provide a mobile app that is fantastic, you can pair your phone to your unit and live map new areas, or simply study charts on the go from anywhere. This card is inserted into the Element under the rubber seal at the power up button.

Finally software updates….
Something I’m not good at nor have I ever done one on a Raymarine in all the years using them. I done this from my garage in the middle of nowhere with no internet……..
Yea……. I know……. I connected the Element to the personal hotspot on my phone and using 4g I was able to download and successfully install the new lighthouse software to the Element with no issues what so ever on my first attempt, but remember to do this you need to remove your chart card from the Element and install a sd card, do not try to update the software using a chart card installed….

Pretty impressed so far and the fitting was extremely easy.
I will get a review of the unit up soon out on the water..