so ive been licensed about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF DX, some 6m sporadic-e stuff, even messed around with meteor scatter a little on JT65B. but EME has always been this sort of mythical thing in the back of my mind. like the idea that you're bouncing a signal off the moon and someone 10,000 miles away hears it is just... i dont know, it still blows my mind even knowing the physics of it.

anyway i operate from a suburban lot so i know im not gonna be running a 4x4 yagi array on 2m or anything like that. ive been reading about how the weak signal digital modes like JT65 and now Q65 have kind of opened up EME to smaller stations. is that actually realistic or is there still a pretty hard floor on how much antenna and power you need? ive got a 17 element 2m yagi right now and a TS-590 that i sometimes use on 2m with a transverter setup. also what software are people using these days, is WSJT-X still the go-to or has something else taken over?

would love to hear from anyone whos actually done it especially if you're running a modest station

Q65 has genuinely changed things, i wont lie. ive been doing EME on 2m since about 2009 and back in the JT65 days you really did need serious antenna real estate to work anything beyond the big guns. now with Q65 the threshold has dropped noticeably. that said a single 17 element yagi is still going to be tough. you'd probably hear some of the big stations but completing a QSO is another matter. most people who run small single yagi setups say they need at least a kilowatt into a decent antenna to have any real shot. the path loss on 2m EME is brutal, something like 252 dB when the moon is at average distance, and that doesnt care how good your software is.

your transverter setup is fine, the key thing is your preamp. a good low noise preamp right at the feedpoint makes a huge difference, like you want noise figure under 0.3 dB if you can get it. SSB Electronics and Down East Microwave both make stuff that works well. the other thing is moon tracking, you need az/el rotors and something like PstRotator to keep the beam on the moon because the window is short. WSJT-X is still what everyone uses, Q65 is in there now and thats what most people run for 2m EME these days.

i did my first EME contact about two years ago with a single 9 element yagi and 500 watts, so it can happen but honestly it took like three sessions of trying before i completed anything and it was only one of the really big contest stations who was specifically hunting small stations. was a cool moment though. i think the realistic answer is you probably want to think about stacking two yagis if your lot allows it, even a 2x stack makes a meaningful difference. and yeah WSJT-X, just download it and get familiar with Q65 before you even try, there's a big difference in how you operate it versus JT65