Extending MotorGuide Gateway Cable

[Albertan]

Setting up my Xi5 and Carbon 12 on the bow of my boat. I thought I just needed to connect the Xi5's NMEA connector to my backbone (located at my console) with a standard NMEA cable. Went to Motorguide's website and realized I need a special NMEA Gateway cable to get the Carbon units to recognize it and get it functioning through the Carbons. So I ordered the Gateway cable and realized it's only 6' long...that's not long enough to make it to my backbone. Watching another video on MotorGuide's site, they don't recommend extending the Gateway cable, but rather to locate a backbone close to the Xi5 and then extend that "mini-backbone" to your main backbone (go to 4:09 in the attached video if this doesn't make sense). My question is whether this is really necessary. I'd really rather just extend the gateway cable to my main backbone under my console. Has anyone extended the Gateway cable, and if so what were your results? Thanks.

[DQM]

Either way you need to run a cable to your console. Best bet is to do it the recommended way and extend the backbone from the console to the Xi5.

The NMEA side of the gateway cable is just a standard NMEA 2000 connector. You could try and extend the gateway cable by plugging in another NMEA 2000 cable and run that to your backbone. The video says it may reduce performance. I have no idea if that is true but you could always try it.

But again, you have to run a cable from the Xi5 to the console regardless, so extending the backbone is really no more work than trying to extend the gateway cable and you know it will work.

[Transom]

you need a nema extension cable and a t to connect to the gateway cable. Terminate at the new t instead of at the console where you will replace one of the current terminators with the extension cable.