so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some weak signal VHF when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of fascinated by EME. watched a bunch of videos, read a few articles, and i think i want to at least try it seriously. problem is every time i start digging into the requirements i end up more confused than when i started.

from what i understand you basically need a big antenna, a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, and a decent amount of power. running JT65 seems like the way most people do it these days on 2m which makes sense given the path loss is something insane like 250+ dB. but ive seen people say you can do it with a single yagi which seems hard to believe and also seen guys with 4 or 8 yagi arrays who still have trouble making contacts. so whats the realistic minimum setup here? im on a suburban lot, have room for maybe a 12-15 element yagi if i can convince my wife the mast isnt going to fall on the house. running about 500w at the feedline. is that even worth trying or am i just going to be decoding signals i can never work?

also curious what the activity windows look like, i know moon position matters but how often are there actually other stations on, is there kind of a schedule people follow or is it more random than HF

honest answer: yes you can do single yagi EME on 2m with JT65 but you need to be realistic about it. with 500w and a decent 13-15 element yagi with a good preamp like an SSB Electronics or a Kuhne unit with maybe 0.3-0.4 dB noise figure, you're going to be able to work the big guns, the guys with 4x9 or 4x12 arrays running a kw. they'll decode you easier than you'll decode them but it works. i did my first EME qso with a single M2 2M12 and an SSPA running 350w, took me a while to find someone patient enough but it happened.

the activity thing is probably where people get surprised. its not like HF where there's always someone on. EME activity kind of clusters around the weekends when the moon is at a useful declination, and the big contest weekends like the ARRL EME contest in the fall are honestly the best time for a first qso because everyone and their brother is on. outside of that the ON4KST chat is where you coordinate skeds, people post when they're going to be on and with what antenna direction. you really cant just spin up and call CQ and expect much to happen, at least not at first.

the preamp location is something people underestimate. like you said 500w and a yagi thats one thing but if you stick a relay-switched preamp even 2 or 3 feet from the feedpoint versus right at the feedpoint you're leaving a noticeable chunk of sensitivity on the table. coax loss at 144 MHz adds up fast and it all becomes noise figure. i spent way too long wondering why my decode rates were worse than expected before i moved my MGF1302 based preamp literally onto the boom connector at the feedpoint and it made a real difference.

also dont overlook your tracking. if youre hand-pointing or using a non-computerized rotor setup you're going to miss a lot of the contact window especially when the moon is moving fast relative to your horizon. i use a simple az-el setup with a G-5500 and it works fine but you need the control interface talking to your logging software so it actually follows the moon. thats kind of the unsexy part nobody talks about but its just as important as the antenna gain.