so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some 2m meteor scatter here and there, but EME has always been kind of the holy grail thing in the back of my mind. figured id ask here before i go down a rabbit hole that costs me three months of research and probably money i shouldnt spend

main question is whats the realistic minimum setup to actually make contacts on EME these days. i know back in the day you needed a massive array and a moonrise window and basically a team of people but ive been reading that JT65 and the digital modes changed that a lot. is that true or are people overselling how accessible it is now

on 2m specifically im wondering if a single yagi situation is even viable or if im wasting my time without at least a 2x8 array or something. i have a IC-9700 already so the radio side might be ok, and i could swing maybe a medium sized yagi, probably 15-18 elements. preamp would be a mast mounted MGF1302 based unit i think. just not sure if the whole thing comes together or if im just going to sit there calling and hearing nothing

also the tracking thing - do people actually build their own az/el rotors for this or is there decent commercial stuff that isnt completely insane in price

the JT65 thing is real, not overhyped. i made my first EME QSO with a single 9el M2 yagi and about 200w into it, IC-910H at the time. it works but you are definitely at the weak end of things - you'll be calling the big guns and not the other way around, and youll miss a lot of contacts just because the geometry doesnt line up right when the moon is at a bad elevation angle

with a 9700 you should be fine radio wise, that thing has a solid receiver and the built in SDR functionality helps. i'd say shoot for at least a 17 or 19 element yagi if you can, the difference in gain between say a 13el and a 19el is enough to matter when youre already link-budget limited. and yes absolutely do the mast mounted preamp, that's probably the single most important thing you can do besides the antenna itself, every tenth of a dB of feedline loss between the antenna and first amplifier hurts you on receive

for tracking honestly most people i know running modest setups use a yaesu G-5500 with one of the various PC control interfaces. not perfect mechanically but it gets the job done and the software side is well supported. there's also the EA4TX stuff which i've heard good things about. full EME tracking software like MoonSked or just using WSJT-X which has tracking built in now sort of

been running EME on 144 for about two years, can confirm what the other guy said about the preamp being critical. i actually ruined a solid week of attempts early on because i had like 8 feet of coax between the antenna and the preamp and didn't realize how much that was killing my noise figure. moved it to the mast and it was night and day

one thing nobody really warns you about is the patience aspect. like even with a decent station you can sit through a whole moonpass and get maybe one or two complete QSOs if youre lucky depending on who else is up. the JT65B mode on EME is a bit different from the terrestrial stuff, the timing and sequencing takes a little getting used to. there's also stuff like libration fading that'll drive you nuts until you understand whats happening

also random thought but have you looked at the EME2 system for scheduling - a lot of operators post their activity windows there and it makes finding someone to work way less random than just calling CQ into the void