so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done plenty of HF stuff, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been kind of this mythical thing in the back of my head that i figured was only for guys with massive arrays and a field full of yagis. recently though ive been reading more about it and it seems like the digital modes especially JT65 have kind of opened it up for people with more modest setups? at least thats the impression i get.

my current situation is i have a 17el yagi for 2m that i use for terrestrial weak signal and i was wondering if thats even remotely viable for EME or if im just kidding myself. ive seen people mention minimum antenna gain requirements and i honestly dont know where my setup falls. running an IC-9700 and a good preamp at the feedpoint, nothing exotic. i guess my main question is whether people are actually making EME contacts with smaller single yagi setups or if i need to be thinking about a 4 yagi array minimum before i even bother pointing at the moon

yeah single yagi EME is absolutely a thing now, JT65B basically changed everything for small stations. back in the cw only days you needed massive arrays just to hear anything but now guys are making contacts with a single long yagi and 100 watts, granted it helps to be working against a well equipped station on the other end but its genuinely possible. your 17el is not huge but its workable. you'd want to know the gain figure on it, most decent 17el designs are somewhere around 15-16 dBd which is enough to at least hear signals on a good night.

the 9700 is fine, the preamp placement is critical like you said. biggest thing a lot of people overlook starting out is the feedline loss, even a couple dB between your preamp and the radio adds up when you're talking about signals that are barely above the noise floor. also elevation capability on your mount if you dont have it already, moon isnt always conveniently placed at low elevation angles especially for EME windows with Europe if you're in the states.

i started EME about two years ago with a single 4m long yagi on 2m, made maybe a dozen contacts total but they were real contacts and it was one of the coolest things ive done in ham radio honestly. the frustrating part is the moon windows are short and scheduling matters a lot, like you cant just point at the moon randomly and expect someone to be there. the EME2 logger and the online scheduling tools are kind of essential, people post their activity times and you can plan around mutual moon windows. patience is the other thing, ive sat for two hours on a scheduled sked and had nothing happen because of unexpected QSB or the other guys equipment issue or whatever. but when it works its just unreal to think about where that signal went