so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF DX but someone at the club meeting last month got me really interested in EME and now i cant stop reading about it. the thing is the more i read the more overwhelmed i get because it seems like you either need this massive yagi array or youre just not gonna make any contacts at all.

my current setup is a 100w rig and i have a decent sized yard so antenna wise i have some flexibility. i was looking at 2m EME as a starting point since thats where most of the activity seems to be but im not sure if a single long yagi even has a shot at working anyone or if i need to go full dish situation. also whats the deal with JT65 vs the older CW EME contacts, is JT65 pretty much the only realistic mode for smaller stations now? and if anyone has actually made EME contacts i would love to hear what the bare minimum setup looked like on your end.

yeah 2m is definitely the right band to start on, thats where the bulk of the EME activity is concentrated especially on weekends. single yagi EME is absolutely possible with JT65B, i wouldnt even say its a compromise, its how a lot of people run it now. you want something in the range of a 9 to 11 element long boom yagi, something with decent gain, and you really need a good preamp at the feedpoint because the path loss is brutal and your noise figure matters a lot more than most people realize coming from HF.

power is the other big thing. 100w is on the low end but people have done it. you really want to be pushing 500w or more to have consistent results, the difference between 100 and 500w is significant on a path thats like 250,000 miles each way. also look into the WSJT-X software if you havent already, JT65B support is built right in and thats what basically everyone is using now for weak signal EME. CW EME still happens but youre going to need a much bigger station to pull that off reliably, big arrays, kilowatt, the whole deal.

i did my first EME contact about two years ago on 2m, was using a single M2 2MXP28 yagi and a 500w amp, preamp was an ATF531P8 based unit mounted right at the boom. honestly the hardest part wasnt the RF side it was getting the antenna on an az/el mount that could actually track the moon accurately enough. if your elevation rotor has any slop in it youre gonna lose a lot of signal right at moonrise and moonset which is actually when the path is sometimes more favorable depending on geometry.

JT65B is pretty much the mode unless youre building a serious array. i made maybe 40 contacts that first year running that setup, mix of European and US stations, even got JA once which i was pretty stoked about. the EME2 software or just watching the ON4KST chat is almost essential for coordinating skeds especially when youre getting started because random CQ on EME can feel like shouting into a void until you build up some contacts who know your call.