so ive been licensed for about 8 years now mostly doing HF stuff, some 2m ssb when conditions are good, but ive been reading about EME for a couple years and i think i want to actually try it. not sure if im being realistic though.

right now i have a 10 element yagi for 2m and a decent preamp, IC-9700 as the radio. i know the big guns are running arrays of like 4x9el or bigger dishes but i see people talking about JT65 making small station EME possible and i dont know how small is too small for a first contact or if thats even a realistic goal with what i have.

also the whole moon tracking thing, do i need a full az/el rotator setup? i was looking at the SPID stuff and the prices are not nothing. and is there software everyone uses or is it kind of fragmented. i keep seeing references to WXtrack and also some guys using Ham Radio Deluxe for the tracking piece but i dont know what actually works well for the EME scheduling side of things.

basically just trying to figure out if this is a multi-thousand dollar rabbit hole before i can work a single station or if a modest setup can actually do something useful

okay so 10el yagi on 2m with the 9700 is actually not nothing, you're probably not going to be working random EME but on JT65 with a solid preamp and low feedline loss you can def get contacts during good windows, especially around perigee when the path loss is a bit lower. the math works out to maybe -25 to -27dB on your end which is tight but stations with big arrays will hear you if your noise floor is decent.

the tracking question is the real money sink honestly. you need az/el, theres no way around it unless your yagi is on a tripod and youre willing to hand track which some guys actually do for a first contact just to prove the concept. the SPID RAU or RAS setups are popular, ive also seen guys use the Yaesu G-5500 combo which is cheaper but has some backlash issues people complain about. for software basically everyone doing serious EME scheduling is on the ON4KST chat for real-time coordination and using WSJT-X for the actual operating. the moon tracking part, most people use either WXtrack or PstRotator which talks to the rotator controller directly, pstrotator is kind of the standard now i think.

dont expect to just fire it up and start making contacts though, the timing synchronization stuff in JT65 is critical and your computer clock needs to be GPS disciplined or at least ntp synced pretty tightly or youll just be confused about why nobody hears you

i went through this exact same thing last year, ended up with a 4x11el array and the G-5500 and honestly the backlash thing is real but manageable if you set up the software offsets right. first EME contact was with a big gun in Japan and i literally sat there for like 20 minutes not believing it worked.

one thing nobody told me upfront is how much the feedline matters, like way more than i expected. i went from LMR400 to hardline on the run from the preamp to the radio and picked up maybe 0.3dB which doesnt sound like much but at these signal levels it kinda is. the preamp needs to be at the mast, not at the radio, thats just non negotiable.

also the ON4KST chat that the other guy mentioned is essential, thats where you set up skeds with stations who will specifically point at you and call you, which as a small station is kind of how you get your first contacts. random EME with your setup is probably not realistic but sked-based stuff absolutely is