so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF stuff, some weak signal VHF on 2m and 70cm, but ive always had this thing in the back of my head about moonbounce. like the whole concept of bouncing a signal off the moon and having someone on the other side of the planet pick it up is just insane to me still.

anyway i finally started looking into what it would actually take to get on EME and honestly the equipment requirements are kind of all over the place depending on who you ask. from what i understand you basically need a big dish or yagi array, a low noise preamp right at the feed, and a decent amount of power. but how much is enough? ive been reading about guys running single yagi setups on 2m with like 400w and making JT65 contacts and then other people saying you need a 10 meter dish to do anything useful. im on a suburban lot so a giant dish is probably out but i have room for maybe a 4 yagi array if i get creative with the neighbors.

also the moon tracking thing seems complicated - do most people build their own az/el rotators or buy something. the commercial stuff looks expensive. and whats the deal with the EME2 software everyone keeps mentioning, is that still what people use or has something replaced it

welcome to the rabbit hole, you wont regret it probably. so the single yagi guys on JT65 are real, ive worked a few of them myself but they're mostly working big stations with serious arrays on the other end, like a 10+ yagi setup or a dish. a 4x yagi array on 2m with a good preamp and 500-600w is actually pretty solid for JT65 EME, you'd be surprised what you can work. the key thing people underestimate is the LNA - you want something with under 0.3dB noise figure right at the feedpoint, like a SSB Electronic or similar, dont put it in the shack or you've thrown away half your system. coax loss on 2m at any real length is brutal.

for tracking most people use either a Yaesu G-5500 combo for smaller arrays or go custom. theres guys running arduino based systems tied into the WSJT suite for automatic tracking which works pretty well from what ive seen. and yeah WSJT-X with JT65 is still the main mode, Q65 is starting to catch on too for some stuff. moon net mailing list is where alot of the scheduling happens, get on there and lurk for a while before you try to make contacts, youll learn a ton just from watching the scheduling posts.

the dish vs yagi debate is kind of endless tbh. i ran a 4x9el array for two years before i got my 3m dish sorted and the array was actually more fun in some ways because setup and troubleshooting was easier. dish gives you more gain obviously but the feed design becomes its own whole project and if your surface accuracy isnt good youre leaving a lot on the table anyway. one thing nobody told me starting out was how much the ground gain matters depending on your elevation angle when the moon rises or sets, can give you a few dB for free if you work it right. anyway dont let the complexity scare you off, first EME contact is something you dont forget