so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF stuff, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that i keep putting off because it seems like you need a small country's budget to do it right. but lately ive been reading more into it and i'm wondering if im overestimating what you actually need to get started, at least on 2m EME.

my current setup is a pair of long yagis for 2m that i use for weak signal work, i think each one is around 12 dBd gain. i've got a good LNA right at the feedpoint, sequencer, the usual stuff. my question is basically — is this anywhere near enough to work EME or am i going to need to go full dish route before i hear anything at all. ive read about people working stations with 4 yagis and decent power but i genuinely dont know what the minimum viable setup looks like these days now that JT65 and Q65 are so common. the old EME2 software era seems like a totally different world.

also just curious if anyone here has actually done an EME contact and what that first one felt like, because honestly it sounds like kind of a wild thing to do

2 yagis is definitely workable for EME in the JT65/Q65 era, it's not what it used to be where you basically needed a 20-foot dish or forget it. you're going to want at least 500w at the feedline, preferably more, and your noise figure matters a lot more than people realize — if your LNA isn't within the first foot or so of the feedpoint you're leaving real performance on the table. with two decent 12 dBd yagis and like 600-800w you should be able to work the big gun stations, the ones running 4 x 9 el or dishes. you won't be calling CQ and getting pileups but you can make contacts for sure.

the main thing nobody tells you until you've actually tried it is how much the moon elevation window matters. you need a clear shot, and depending on your location and antenna mount you might only have a usable window for an hour or two and then you're done. so check your moon rise/set times and make sure your yagis can actually track — manual is doable but it gets old fast. i ran a fixed elevation array for a while and just waited for the moon to drift through, worked a few stations that way but it's not ideal.

first EME contact is pretty surreal honestly. there's something about knowing that signal went up 384,000 km and came back and you decoded it. even on JT65 where it's just a screen full of text it still gets you.

yeah what he said about the LNA placement is critical, i cant stress that enough. i had mine about 3 meters down the coax for a while and when i finally moved it to the mast head my noise figure dropped by like 1.5 dB and it made a noticeable difference in decodes. also make sure whatever relay you're using in the sequencer is actually fast enough and isn't letting your TX bleed into the LNA because i fried one that way and it was an expensive lesson.

on the dish question — you dont need one to start, but if you get serious about it you'll probably want to go that direction eventually. i went from 4 yagis to a 3m mesh dish and the difference was pretty significant. but honestly start with what you have, get a contact or two, then decide if you want to go deeper. a lot of people spend months building this massive array and then lose interest. better to validate that you actually enjoy the mode first.