so ive been on HF for about 6 years now and lately ive been getting really interested in trying EME on 2m. i know the basics conceptually, signal goes up, bounces off the moon, comes back down, path loss is insane, you need either a big dish or a yagi array, and everyone uses JT65B or Q65 now. but actually sitting down and figuring out what i need to do a first contact is kind of overwhelming.

right now i have a IC-9700 which i know is popular for weak signal stuff, and a single 9el yagi on a push-up mast that i use for local ssb. is that even in the ballpark or am i way off? i see guys talking about stacked arrays of like 4x9 or 4x11 el yagis and moonbounce dishes and i dont know if thats what you NEED or if thats what the serious guys run. also is there a minimum power level or is it really just about the antenna gain?

any pointers would be appreciated, i feel like ive been reading about this for months and still feel lost

the IC-9700 is actually a solid starting point, good phase noise floor on it which matters a lot for weak signal work. the single yagi though, yeah thats gonna be tough for random EME. path loss on 2m EME is around 252 dB give or take depending on moon distance, which sounds completely insane because it is. with a single 9el you're probably looking at maybe 12-13 dBd of gain which just isnt enough to hear most stations even with 100w.

the minimum practical setup most people talk about for working initials with JT65B is something like 4x9el yagis and at least 400-500w at the feed, more is better obviously. some of the real big gun stations run kilowatts into stacks of 16 or 32 yagis or a 6m dish and those guys can work almost anything. but thats not where you have to start. with 4 yagis and a decent preamp right at the feedpoint you can get on and work the big stations at least. key thing people miss is the preamp location, if its at the rig and not at the antenna youre throwing away a lot of sensitivity with coax loss on 2m.

check out the online EME chat on dxbase or ping around on the moonnet reflector, lot of helpful people there who will tell you exactly what youre able to work with a given setup before you spend anything

i did my first EME contact about two years ago with honestly a pretty modest setup, 4x11el DK7ZB yagis and 750w out of an old Dressler amplifier i got cheap. elevation rotor was the part i almost forgot about - dont forget you need both az and el, moon goes up and down and you'll miss the whole window if you cant track elevation. seems obvious but i didnt really think through the rotor situation until late in the build and had to scramble.

Q65-60A is what most people run now i think, maybe more forgiving than JT65B in some conditions. worked a dozen or so initials the first year just on weekends when the moon was up for both me and the other station. its genuinely one of the most satisfying things ive done in this hobby, knowing your signal went a quarter million miles each way is just wild