so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff with some 2m weak signal when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of obsessed with the idea of EME. like the idea that youre bouncing a signal off the actual moon is just insane to me and i want to try it before i get too old to climb the tower lol

anyway i started doing some reading and im already kind of overwhelmed. i know you basically need a big antenna and a lot of power, but how much is enough? ive seen guys doing it with a single yagi on 2m using JT65 and ive seen other stations with these insane dish setups. is the dish stuff basically required for 70cm and up or can you squeak by on 2m with like a 4 yagi array and an amp? my current setup is a 5 element yagi and a 100w radio so im obviously nowhere near ready but trying to figure out what the realistic path looks like

also the noise figure thing, i keep reading about preamps at the feedpoint and how much that matters. is this like a massive difference in practice or is it more marginal than the forums make it out to be? i have a masthead preamp already but its rated for HF up to 2m and i honestly dont know if its any good for weak signal stuff

the single yagi EME thing is real but you gotta be honest with yourself about what you're getting into. with 4 yagis and legal limit on 2m you can work stations that have big arrays on the other end, but you're not going to be working other small pistols very often. the JT65 mode changed everything though, back in the analog days you basically needed a massive antenna farm and i remember guys spending stupid money just to get a handful of contacts a year

the preamp thing is absolutely not marginal, it's probably the single most important thing you can do after antenna gain. system noise figure on EME basically needs to be under 1dB to be competitive, ideally like 0.5-0.7dB range. that masthead preamp youre running is probably garbage for this, you want something like a low noise amplifier specifically designed for 2m EME, SSB Electronic or DB6NT stuff is what most people run. the feedline loss between the antenna and the preamp matters enormously, even like 0.5dB of coax before the LNA wrecks your noise figure. mount it right at the feed or as close as you physically can

start with 2m, get 4 yagis crossed polarized if you can, and just get on during the big EME contests and see what you can hear. WSJT-X and JT65B is the mode, moonbounce.info has the skeds. you'll be surprised what you can do once the system is optimized

been doing 2m EME for a few years with a 4x9 el array and about 700w out, its totally doable but man the preamp situation is no joke. i fried my first LNA because i forgot to sequence properly and let the amp key up before switching. thats a whole other thing you gotta sort out, the sequencer, because if you TX into your receive preamp youre having a bad day

one thing nobody really told me starting out was how much the moon's position matters in terms of practical operating windows. like yeah the moon is up for hours but the actual window where youre both pointing at it with good geometry and the path is workable is sometimes pretty short depending on where you both are. the EME2 software or the built in stuff in WSJT-X handles the tracking but you need an az/el rotor which adds to the cost if you dont have one