so ive been licensed for about 12 years and mostly do HF stuff, some 2m weak signal when conditions are good, but ive always wanted to try moonbounce and i think im finally at a point where i could actually put something together for it. problem is every time i start reading about it i get overwhelmed pretty fast.

right now i have a pair of M2 2M5WL yagis that i use for terrestrial weak signal and occasional aurora stuff. from what i understand thats nowhere near enough gain for EME on 2m, most people seem to be running arrays of 4 or even 8 yagis plus running legal limit. is that pretty much the minimum or are there guys making contacts with smaller setups these days? i know JT65 changed everything but im not sure exactly how much it changed the antenna requirements.

also the preamp situation confuses me a bit, i know you want the lowest possible noise figure right at the feedpoint but im not sure what people are actually using. ive seen references to MGF1302 based preamps and also some of the newer PHEMT stuff. any thoughts on what actually works well here would be appreciated, im not in a huge rush just trying to understand what a realistic entry level EME setup looks like in 2024

yeah JT65B really did change the game, youre right about that. back in the analog days you basically needed a massive array to work anyone, now guys are making contacts with 4 yagis and a kilowatt which would have seemed impossible in the CW-only era. ive even heard of contacts made with 2 yagis on both ends but thats pretty marginal and you need really good conditions and patient operators on both sides.

for a starter setup id honestly say 4 long yagis is the practical minimum if you want to work more than just the big guns. your M2 5-wavelength yagis are decent antennas but two of them isnt going to cut it unless youre just trying to work stations running 4x20 element arrays or something. the stacking and phasing harness is its own rabbit hole, you want to keep the feed line losses as low as possible obviously, a lot of guys use hardline even on the short runs between array and shack.

for the preamp, honestly just get a good PHEMT unit, the SSB Electronic stuff has been reliable for years, SP-2000 or similar. noise figure around 0.3-0.4 dB is what you're shooting for and mount it right at the antenna, like right there at the feedpoint junction, every foot of coax before the preamp costs you. the sequencing relay setup to protect the preamp during transmit is something a lot of new guys forget about and thats how you let the magic smoke out on your first attempt.

I got my first EME qso last winter with 4x9el M2 yagis and about 800w at the feedpoint after losses, so it definitely can be done without a massive array. took a lot of patience and i had to be picky about who i called, mostly went after the big stations in EU that were putting out strong signals. WSJT-X and JT65B is what everyone uses, make sure your system clock is synced properly thats actually really important and a lot of posts i see from people troubleshooting are just a clock sync issue.

honestly the hardest part for me was getting the elevation rotor sorted out, i was just doing horizontal stuff before and adding elevation to track the moon across the sky was more of a project than i expected mechanically. the software side is fine, there are several good programs for moon tracking that interface with the rotors.