so ive been a licensed ham for about 6 years now mostly doing HF stuff, some 2m ssb when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of fascinated by EME and i think im finally at a point where i want to actually try it instead of just reading about it. the problem is every time i dig into the requirements it feels like the goalposts keep moving on what you actually need to make a contact.

from what i understand the minimum viable setup for 2m EME these days is something like a decent yagi array — ive seen people say a single long yagi can work with JT65 but then other people say you really want at least a 4x array to do anything useful. my current radio is an IC-7300 which i know is HF only so thats obviously not going to cut it, im probably looking at adding something like a 7610 or maybe just a dedicated 2m radio, the IC-9700 seems like the obvious choice but i dont know if thats overkill or underkill for this mode. also the preamp situation seems really critical, ive read that even a mediocre preamp placed at the feedpoint vs at the radio makes a huge difference because of feedline losses.

has anyone here made their first EME contact recently and what did your station actually look like when you did it? not looking for the ideal endgame setup, just the realistic minimum to actually get a two way going.

yeah so the single yagi question comes up constantly and the honest answer is it depends a lot on who youre working and what mode. pure CW EME is basically dead for newcomers, you need serious antenna gain for that, but JT65B changed everything for smaller stations. i made my first ever EME contact on 2m with a single 9el M2 yagi, an IC-9700, and an SSB Electronics preamp right at the feedpoint. it worked but it was not easy — you have to be very patient and you basically have to catch the bigger stations who are actively trying to work smalls.

the preamp placement thing you mentioned is absolutely real and probably the single most impactful thing outside of antenna size. every tenth of a dB you can save matters on this mode. i run about 25 feet of LMR-400 from feedpoint to shack and even that is kind of painful, id put the preamp right at the boom if i could get power up there cleanly. the IC-9700 is genuinely good for this by the way, its not overkill at all, the built in preamp is decent but you still want external for serious work.

look up the WSJT-X EME procedures and start monitoring the 2m EME calling frequency, just listening for a while before you transmit teaches you a ton about how it actually works operationally.

i did my first EME qso last spring, honestly was not expecting it to work as well as it did. i had a 4x15el array i built over the winter and the 9700 and caught W5UN on one of his sked nights. the array makes a huge differnce over single yagi, like not even close in terms of how many stations you can hear.

one thing nobody really warned me about is the azimuth and elevation rotator situation. i had an old prop pitch motor for az but my el rotator was kind of janky and tracking the moon accurately matters more than i thought it would. also polarity is a whole thing you kind of have to think about depending on where the moon is in your sky relative to the other station.