so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some 2m SSB when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of fascinated by moonbounce and never really pulled the trigger on doing anything about it. started reading more about it lately and honestly it seems way more accessible than it used to be with JT65 and the weak signal stuff but im still kind of overwhelmed by the equipment side of things.

from what i understand you basically need a serious yagi or dish setup for 2m or 70cm, a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, and a decent linear amp to get your power up. ive seen people say you need at least 4 yagis and 500w to have any real chance on 2m EME but ive also read about guys doing single yagi EME with JT65 which sounds wild to me. is the single yagi thing actually worth it or is it just like a novelty where you can only work the big guns? also what kind of NF are we realistically talking about for the LNA, ive seen numbers like 0.3-0.5dB thrown around. and how do you handle the doppler and polarization rotation issues in practice, does the software handle most of that or is there manual stuff involved. sorry for the scattered questions, been going down a rabbit hole tonight

the single yagi thing on 2m is real but yeah youre basically limited to working the big EME stations, guys running 4x or 8x yagi arrays or dishes. with JT65B you can close a link that would have been completely impossible in the CW-only days so its not nothing, i worked 23 entities my first year with a single 9el yagi and 400w, took patience but it happens. the LNA question is important though and honestly its where a lot of people cheap out and regret it. you really want sub 0.5dB NF, the Kuhne stuff is popular, SSB Electronic makes good preamps too. mount it right at the feedpoint, any feedline loss before the LNA kills your receive sensitivity and thats actually more important than transmit power in a lot of cases.

doppler on 2m isnt that dramatic, maybe plus or minus 300hz give or take depending on geometry, WSJT-X handles it fine. the polarization rotation is the bigger practical headache honestly. if you have a fixed polarization antenna you will sometimes hit the window where the moon geometry puts you in deep cross-pol and you lose like 20dB which is basically the whole link budget. H/V switchable or circular pol helps a lot. some guys just accept the outages and wait for geometry to improve.

one thing nobody told me when i started messing with this is how much the azimuth and elevation accuracy of your rotator setup matters. i had a cheap az/el rig that was off by several degrees and i couldnt figure out why my signals were so much weaker than expected, especially near moonrise and moonset when the path length is longest. turns out i was just not pointing where i thought i was. ended up getting a G-5500 and actually calibrating it properly and things got noticeably better. not saying you need fancy gear but dont overlook the mechanical side, a great LNA on a poorly aimed antenna is still going to disappoint you