so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a decent amount of HF work, some VHF contesting, got pretty comfortable with weak signal stuff on 2m. but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that i kept saying "maybe someday" about. well im finally at a point where i have a decent yard and some money saved up and i want to actually try it.

the problem is every time i start reading about it i get completely overwhelmed. like some guys seem to be doing it with a single yagi and 100 watts and other guys have these massive arrays that look like they belong at a government facility. im not trying to do this half-hearted but i also dont have room for 4x20 element yagis or whatever. whats the realistic minimum to actually make contacts these days, especially with JT65 and stuff? is 2m the best band to start on or would 70cm actually be easier given the dish options?

also curious how the scheduling side works now, do people still use the EME2 reflector or has that moved somewhere else

2m is almost certainly where you want to start, the activity level is just way higher and you'll actually find people to work. on 70cm you need significantly more antenna gain to compensate for the additional path loss and the equipment gets pricier fast.

for a realistic starting point on 2m with JT65B, a lot of guys are doing single yagi EME now with something in the 9-12 dBd range and running whatever legal limit they can manage. the WSJT software has made this completely viable compared to what it took back in the CW-only days. you'll want low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, like a 0.3 dB or better NF unit, because that coax run back to the shack will kill you otherwise. the DB6NT and SSB Electronics preamps are popular choices, or you can build one if youre into that sort of thing.

honestly the biggest thing people underestimate isnt the antenna, its the station noise floor. even a modest antenna with a really clean receive chain will outperform a bigger antenna with a mediocre preamp bolted to the back of the radio.

scheduling still happens on the EME2 reflector and also on the ON4KST chat, which is honestly where most of the real-time coordination happens these days. you'll want to get on there before a session and announce yourself, people are generally pretty helpful with new EME stations.

yeah what he said about the preamp is exactly right, learned that the hard way. i was running a pretty decent 2x9el setup and couldnt figure out why my echo tests were so marginal and it turned out my preamp was mounted like 8 feet from the antenna with RG-213 in between. moved it to the boom and it was like a different station.

one thing nobody really warns you about is the azimuth/elevation rotator situation, that stuff gets expensive and complicated real quick especially if you want to track smoothly. some guys get by with manual elevation settings and just doing fixed-elevation passes but its a pain. the G-5500 combo is the usual budget starting point but even that requires some fiddling to interface with tracking software properly