so ive been licensed for about 8 years now and done a lot of HF stuff, some VHF contesting, but EME has always seemed kind of like this mythical thing that only guys with massive arrays in their backyard could do. recently started reading more about it and apparently single yagi EME is actually a thing now? at least on 2m with the weak signal digital modes.

my current setup is a single 9el yagi for 2m pointed fixed at the horizon for local stuff, obviously thats not gonna cut it for moonbounce. from what i can tell i need at minimum a longer boom yagi or maybe a pair of them, a decent preamp right at the feedpoint, and then running JT65 through WSJT-X. my radio is an IC-9700 so that part should be okay i think.

what i cant figure out is the practical minimum. like is a single long yagi like a 15 or 17 element actually going to get me any contacts or am i just wasting time chasing the moon with no real chance. the prop delay and doppler are handled by the software right? i feel like im missing something obvious about the timing or the moon tracking side of things

yeah single yagi EME is very much real on 2m, people do it all the time with JT65B and Q65 these days. the old school guys with the 4x16el arrays would laugh but honestly with a good preamp you can work it. you want something in the 12dBd gain range at minimum, so a longer boom yagi like an M2 2MXP28 or a Tonnaerre or home brew equivalent. the key thing people underestimate is the preamp, you really want something like 0.3dB NF or better and it needs to be RIGHT at the feed, like within a foot, every tenth of a dB matters more on EME than anything else youll ever do in radio.

doppler and delay yeah the software handles it, WSJT-X just needs accurate time (GPS locked or at least NTP synced well) and you need to set your grid square exactly right. the moon tracking is the other thing, you need an az/el rotator setup, you cant just point it and hope. some guys use a cheap dish rotator for elevation and a normal yagi rotator for azimuth and that works fine. its a rabbit hole but a fun one

i worked my first EME contact last spring with a single 15el yagi and the 9700, so it can definitely be done. took me a while to get the rotator situation sorted out, i was using a cheap TV rotator for elevation which was a disaster honestly it kept losing track. upgraded to a proper el rotator and things got way better. also make sure your coax run is as short as possible or go with hardline, i was losing so much in the run before i sorted that out. first contact was with a big station in europe so they were doing the heavy lifting but it still counted lol