so ive been on HF for about 12 years and VHF/UHF weak signal for maybe 4 of those, mostly 2m SSB tropo stuff and some meteor scatter. been watching the EME guys at my club do their thing and im starting to think i want to give it a real shot on 2m. i know its not exactly plug and play but i feel like i have a decent foundation at least.

my current setup is a single 11el yagi on a az/el mount i built for satellite, running a TS-790 into a down east microwave preamp at the feedpoint. power is about 100w at the coax right now. i know thats not going to cut it for EME but im trying to understand what the realistic floor is these days with digital modes. like is a single long yagi and a kilowatt even worth pointing at the moon or do i need to go full 4-bay yagi array before anyone will hear me.

also what software are people using, i see JT65B mentioned a lot but is that still the thing or has something changed. genuinely not sure where to start and the EME guys at my club all have these massive stations so they kind of assume you know more than i do when i ask questions

honest answer is that single yagi EME on 2m is absolutely doable now thanks to JT65B, back in the CW-only days you needed a huge array just to hear anything off the moon but the digital modes changed everything. that said 100w is going to be a real struggle, most guys doing single yagi stuff are running at least 500w and preferably 800-1000w at the antenna. the path loss on moonbounce is something like 252dB so every dB matters, you'd be surprised how much difference going from 100w to 600w makes in terms of who can decode you.

your preamp placement sounds right, keeping it at the feedpoint is essential, the noise figure on that setup matters a lot more than people realize. for software yeah JT65B is still the main thing for 2m EME, there's a specific version that runs on the 2m calling frequency which is 144.120 USB. WSJT-X has kind of taken over for a lot of other stuff but the EME community kind of stuck with the older JT65B client for a while, though i think people use MAP65 and WSJT-X more now honestly. you should really check the moon-net mailing list, thats where the serious EME crowd hangs out and they'll give you straight answers about what works.

i did my first EME qso on a single 9el yagi and about 750w maybe three years ago, worked a couple big gun stations in europe during a contest weekend. dont let the array guys make you feel like you need a field full of antennas to get started. the big thing i wasnt prepared for was the pointing accuracy, my el/az mount had some slop in it and tracking the moon precisely enough to actually stay on peak is harder than i thought. even being a couple degrees off tanks your signal noticeably. also coax loss between your shack and the antenna is going to kill you if you have any length of run, worth running hardline or putting the amp up at the antenna if you can swing it.