so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a decent amount of HF work, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing on the horizon that i figured was for people with huge yagi arrays in their backyards and unlimited budgets. lately ive been reading more about it and it seems like weak signal digital modes have kind of changed the equation a bit? like JT65 and stuff has made it more accessible than it used to be?

anyway im trying to figure out what a realistic minimal station looks like for 2m EME. i know youre going to say i need more antenna than i have but right now ive got a 9el yagi that i use for terrestrial stuff, an IC-9700, and a decent preamp. i dont even know if thats in the ballpark or way off. also is there software coordination stuff i need to know about before i actually try to call anyone, like i dont want to just point at the moon and start hollering and annoy everyone who actually knows what theyre doing

9 elements on 2m is definitely not going to get you much, honestly. you're probably looking at something like -28 to -30 dBd of receive path loss on a typical EME path and a single 9el just doesnt have the gain to pull signals out reliably, even with JT65. most guys running minimal single yagi setups are using something in the 12-15m boom range, like an M2 2M9SSB or similar, getting you into the 14-16 dBd range. that said some people have done initial contacts with less on good geometry days when the moon is at perigee but its not something you want to count on.

the IC-9700 is actually a pretty solid starting point, lots of EME guys use it, the receiver isnt bad and it does JT65 fine. your preamp matters a lot, what are you running? NF is everything in this game. and yeah check out the ping jockey cluster and the EME2 reflector, people post their schedules there and its how you arrange skeds rather than just blind calling. dont just fire up and CQ, at least not until you have a bit more antenna under you

im kind of in the same boat as you, been lurking on this topic for a while. one thing i did find helpful was the WSJT-X documentation actually has a pretty good section on EME basics and how to set up for weak signal work. also theres a spreadsheet floating around where you can punch in your antenna gain and power and it'll give you a rough estimate of whether a contact is even feasible with a given station on the other end. cant remember where i found it exactly, maybe on the moonbouncers group or somewhere like that

the coordination thing is real though, people do schedule contacts in advance especially for marginal stations, nobody is just casually bouncing signals off the moon and hoping someone random hears them, well okay sometimes but thats mostly the big gun stations with massive arrays