so ive been licensed for about 4 years now and been mostly doing HF stuff, some FT8, occasional SSB contests, but lately ive been reading about EME and its kind of blowing my mind that people are actually bouncing signals off the moon. like the moon. i dont even know how thats real tbh.

anyway i started poking around online and the equipment requirements seem... intense. i keep seeing people talk about needing massive yagi arrays or big dishes, and one guy had like 4x9el yagis on a rotor system that looked like it cost more than my car. is that really the minimum to get on 2m EME or is there a more realistic entry point for someone who doesnt have a big backyard or a second mortgage

i do have a IC-9700 already so i figure thats at least something. and i can probably build a single yagi if thats enough to even hear anything. just not sure if its worth the effort if im going to be deaf to everyone else on the band. also heard JT65 is what most people use for this? or is it WSJT-X with a specific mode, im getting confused by all the different software options

yeah the IC-9700 is actually a solid starting point, good receiver, low noise floor which matters a lot for EME. the preamp situation is where people get religious about things though — you really want a low NF masthead preamp, like sub 0.5 dB if you can manage it, because by the time that signal comes back from the moon it is absolutely in the noise floor.

single yagi on 2m EME is doable but honestly you're going to be limited to working the big guns, the stations with the large arrays or dishes. not saying its impossible but your contact rate will be frustrating if you expect it to be like FT8 on 20m. most people do a 4-yagi cross-polarization setup as a reasonable minimum for actually having consistent QSOs. the mechanical side of it, the H-frame, the rotor with moon tracking, thats where the cost and effort stacks up fast.

for software yes WSJT-X with JT65A is what basically everyone uses on 2m EME. you want to make sure your system clock is synced tight, like within a second, because the timing really matters. look up the online EME logger too, that shows whos on and where the moon is relative to your location and theirs, it helps a ton when youre first starting out trying to figure out windows.

i got my first EME qso last winter with a single 11el yagi on 2m and the 9700, so it can be done. took me most of a weekend sitting there watching the screen but when that callsign finally decoded i genuinely just sat there for a second. worked a station in germany if i remember right, they had a big array obviously doing most of the heavy lifting on their end.

the moon tracking software is something people underestimate. i use a cheap az-el rotor setup and getting the pointing right is honestly half the battle, there's a few programs that interface with WSJT and handle the tracking automatically. thats something worth sorting out before you even worry about the antenna size honestly