I got my Elite 5 HDI installed and out on the water, sonar works perfectly and will even hold bottom while on plane, but the downscan will barely even show bottom. It will just show a fuzzy line where the bottom should be or sometimes nothing at all. Any suggestions??

 

Confirm you have the HDI ducer and not the 83/200. Have you tried 455kHz? 

I've tried adjusting everything in the settings and I have the right transducer. I was thinking more along the lines of interference or possibly the transducer needs adjusting. I was hoping somebody would see the pic and know exactly what it is. 

Which transducer model # do you have selected?

Its a guessing game to what it is by just looking at a picture of a blank screen. Interference would still show bottom, but a cloudy screen above it. Yours is doing exactly what my elite 4 did when just for the heck of it I tried using down imaging screen with an 83/200 kzh ducer, it showed dots on the screen and sometimes a faint bottom return. You might have a broken ducer. 

Have you tried hard resetting the unit to factory default? Back up your gps waypoints then with the unit off hold down the + and - while powering up. Then start over again. Make sure to choose  83/200 + 455/800 HDI transducer under settings-sonar-installation- transducer

What software are you running? Should be 5.1.** or newer. 

 

The person I got it from said the transducer had never been used so I wouldn't think it is broken. Lord I hope she didn't send me the wrong transducer. . I had to buy used because it's all I could afford so I definitely can't pay for a new one. This is what the ducer looks like can you tell the difference from the pic?

So I just found out they sold me the wrong transducer with it. It took me months to save the money to buy this and I end up getting screwed. Typical of the world today. 

I was just going to say, that's the 83/200 not the HDI. The elite 5 HDI was sold as three packages, head unit, 83/200, and 83/200 455/800. You got the 83/200 package. The good news is, I just sold one of those 83/200khz in used condition for $50 so you should be able to get at lest that out of the transducer, and the HDI transducer is around $100. So you aren't totally out of the game yet, sucks that you have to do it though. 

I've got even better news.  You can get a HDI transducer from Lowrance for half the price, roughly $66.  I recently purchased a elite 4x chirp and it came with the 83/200 transducer just like you.  Was ticked until I called customer service and they gave me a code to put in and gave me half off the total.  This is what they told me...

Go to store.navico.com

search - 10976-001  this is the HDI transducer that works for my unit and I'm pretty positive it is the exact same for you

put it in you cart and when you go to check out it will have a spot for a code and put in TDXTRADE

Has to be all caps.  

It took them like a week to ship it out, but can't beat the price, plus you can still sell your current transducer and get some money back.

Hope this helps!

(Also hope it's ok I posted this.  It didn't seem to be a big secret when customer service told me.)