so ive been licensed for about 8 years, mostly HF stuff and some weak signal VHF but i keep coming back to the idea of doing EME properly. i did a few contacts years ago with a buddy's setup but never on my own gear. starting to think seriously about building toward it.

the thing is every time i start researching i get overwhelmed pretty fast. like i know the basics, signal goes up hits the moon comes back, round trip path loss is absolutely brutal, you're looking at like 252 dB or something on 2m. thats just an insane number to wrap your head around. but then i see guys working EME with 4 yagis and 1500 watts and it seems doable, and then someone else is talking about needing a dish the size of a small shed and i dont know where reality is anymore.

im thinking 2m to start since thats where most of the activity seems to be. i have a tower with a couple yagis up for terrestrial weak signal work already. current setup is 2x M2 2M5WL yagis stacked, about 400w at the feedpoint, sequencer, good coax. is that anywhere close to enough to even hear anything on EME let alone make contacts, or am i kidding myself. running WSJT-X for JT65 pretty regularly so at least that part isnt new to me.

honest answer? with 2x 2M5WL and 400w you can probably hear echoes of the bigger stations and maybe squeak out some QSOs with the really big gun stations on the other end if conditions line up and the moon is high. JT65A changed everything for EME, guys who would have been completely invisible in the CW era can now make contacts. but you're going to be frustrated a lot at first.

the minimum most people talk about for a realistic 2m EME station is 4 yagis, and even that is marginal unless your noise floor is genuinely low. like system noise temp matters enormously here, a good LNA right at the feedpoint makes a bigger difference than people expect. if you can get your noise figure down to 0.5 dB or below with a good preamp like a SSB Electronics or a home built unit with a quality PHEMT device you'll be in better shape. the moon noise test is how you know youre actually pointing at the right thing and your system is sensitive enough to matter.

with your current setup i'd say go ahead and get on and listen, you can definitely hear the big guys and you might be surprised. just dont expect a huge pile of initials right away. its addictive though once you get a contact, i'll tell you that much.

yeah 2m is the right band to start on, theres way more activity there than any other EME band for most people. i run 4x10 element yagis and about 800w and i get a reasonable number of contacts, not setting any records but its not like pulling teeth either. the key thing nobody really tells you upfront is that your azimuth and elevation rotor setup has to be solid, you'd be surprised how much time you lose chasing the moon when your rotors are flakey or your heading is off a few degrees.

also check the EME2 reflector and the online skeds database, a lot of EME is still semi-coordinated especially for smaller stations wanting to work each other. random on JT65A does happen but having a sked with someone means both stations know when to look and you're not competing with a pile. N0UK has a good writeup somewhere on getting started that i thought was pretty realistic about what to expect with a modest setup.