so ive been a ham for about 12 years now mostly HF stuff, some 2m weak signal, and a buddy of mine at the club keeps going on about EME and how he worked like 40 countries last year just bouncing signals off the moon and i guess im finally curious enough to actually look into it seriously

the problem is every time i try to read up on it i get lost pretty fast. like i understand the basic concept obviously, signal goes up hits the moon comes back down, but the link budget math gets confusing when people start throwing around path losses of 250+ dB and im trying to figure out what that actually means in terms of what i need on the ground to make it work

right now i have a decent IC-9700 and a pair of M2 2m yagis stacked, running maybe 200w out, no preamp yet. is that anywhere close to enough to even hear anything or am i dreaming. ive seen people say you need a big dish or a huge yagi array and then other guys claim to work EME with like 4 yagis which sounds insane to me. also how does JT65 change the picture because i gather thats basically what everyone uses now

sorry if this is a dumb question, i know its a rabbit hole

not a dumb question at all, honestly EME is one of those modes where the barrier feels way higher than it actually is once you understand whats going on. your setup isnt bad for a start, two stacked M2 yagis and 200w will get you on the board with JT65B for sure, you just have to be realistic about who you can work. single yagi stations on the other end are probably out of reach but guys running 4 or 8 yagis with a kilowatt, yeah you can do that

the path loss number is scary but JT65 effectively gives you something like 25-28 dB coding gain over SSB so its really not the same calculation it used to be in the analog days. add a good low noise preamp at the mast head and that makes a real difference, something with a noise figure under 0.5 dB ideally. the 9700 is fine for the IF, its got good dynamic range. main thing honestly is just pointing the antenna accurately, you need to be tracking the moon properly and a lot of people underestimate how critical that is. look at Nova for Windows or similar for tracking software and make sure your az/el rotators are actually accurate because a degree or two of pointing error at 144 MHz hurts

first thing id do is just get on 144.120 during a big EME contest weekend and listen. you might be surprised what you can decode even with what you have now

yeah what he said about the preamp is huge, i was skeptical when i added an SSB Electronics preamp to my setup and it was honestly night and day for receive. cant stress that enough

one thing nobody told me when i started is that Doppler shift is actually something you have to deal with on 2m EME, its not massive but your JT65 software needs to handle it or you'll wonder why you keep missing decodes. WSJT-X handles it automatically once you have your location set right so just double check that. also the moon has to be above like 10 degrees elevation minimum before the ground noise starts killing you, some guys say 5 degrees but i find 10 is more realistic at my QTH

took me about 3 months from deciding to do EME to actually making my first contact and it was with a station in Japan which still kind of blows my mind