The first thing to a successful use of a Lowrance Elite CHIRP unit is to turn the 'Ping Rate' way down.  The factory setting is (generally) almost all the way up.  In a kayak, the result is generally a flashing "0" depth.  Start off by turning it way down & play with it till you achieve the image quality that works for you, the user.

Play with the unit.  Don't be afraid of it.  If you really get in a pinch & mess it up, you can 'Restore Factory Defaults'.

I own a Raymarine Dragonfly 7. 
When the transducer was installed inside the hull via a water bath method,  The unit works best on manual mode and I increased the sonar settings to get the best readings.

Now my go to kayak is a 2015 Revo 13 that has an external transducer pocket.  Auto setting works great.
It does needs some maintenance.  The transducer cover needs to be taken off and cleaned every few months because of dirt / sand build up. 

I went with the Raymarine Dragonfly because of the ease of use of the command buttons and picture quality is awesome.

FFTC
Does turning the ping rate way down also apply to the Elite 5 HDI ?

Adjusting the ping rate applies to image quality of all fishfinders that allow the user to adjust the ping rate.  We tend to see it more in the CHIRP & I "think" this is because the factory setting on the CHIRP units is set very high right out of the box.  I don't think that the HDI was set that high out of the box.

Quote from: FishingForTheCure on October 09, 2015, 08:38:24 AM

The first thing to a successful use of a Lowrance Elite CHIRP unit is to turn the 'Ping Rate' way down.  The factory setting is (generally) almost all the way up.  In a kayak, the result is generally a flashing "0" depth.  Start off by turning it way down & play with it till you achieve the image quality that works for you, the user.

Play with the unit.  Don't be afraid of it.  If you really get in a pinch & mess it up, you can 'Restore Factory Defaults'.

Mine arrived today. I'll have to get it wired up so I can turn it on. Do I need to be on the water or will demo mode allow me to make meaningful adjustments to it?

Nope, you can play with the settings in both demo and standards mode without the transducer in water. Most of the changes you make to the settings will look more meaningful in demo mode though. As Bill said, the "Restore Factory Defaults" is helpful if youfind yoirself in a mess.

My Lowrance 5 with chirp, tranducer, nav chip, and neck thingy is on its way. What great deal. Like a 280 dollar savings.

What is the neck thingy?

It comes with the navi chip rebate. One of those neck face protection

Now I see it comes with the insight and a neck buff. I already own a Navionics gold card so I also chose the insight pro deal. I'm going with the Nautic Insight pro. I was looking at the rebate form, I wonder if this is a mis print. Why would an X model be eligible? It can't use the card.

Quote from: FishingForTheCure on October 10, 2015, 08:27:21 PM

I suspect there's an error on their site.  I'll bring it up fishing to them Monday am.

What error? 

The rebate/offer says that that it applies to 'X' models as well but that doesn't make sense.