so ive been licensed about 6 years now and ive done a fair bit of weak signal stuff on 2m and 6m, mostly tropo and a little meteor scatter, but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing i figured was way out of reach for a regular guy with a suburban lot. then last month i actually decoded a couple stations working moonbounce on 2m using WSJT-X and i kind of lost my mind a little bit. like it clicked that this is actually happening on normal radio equipment and not some government facility.

so now im researching this properly and the antenna stuff is where i get confused fast. i see people doing it with a single yagi these days with JT65 which i did not think was possible, but then i also see stations running 4x or 8x yagi arrays and dish setups and i honestly dont know what the realistic minimum is if you want to actually make contacts vs just decoding stuff and never getting a response. my yagi situation right now is a single 2m yagi about 12 elements, decent preamp already at the feedpoint, running about 200w from the shack. is that even in the ballpark or am i kidding myself

also the elevation rotor thing, do i absolutely need that or can you pick times when the moon is at a useful azimuth without needing to tilt the antenna up. i know this sounds like a dumb question but my current setup is azimuth only and buying another rotor plus replumbing the whole mast sounds like a real project

your existing setup is closer than you think, honestly. single yagi EME on 2m with JT65B is real, people do it every weekend. the guys calling it singe yagi EME or SEME have worked hundreds of contacts with setups not that different from what you described. 12 elements is on the shorter side, something in the 17-19 element range would help, but its not a dealbreaker especially if your feedline loss is low and your preamp NF is decent. what preamp are you running? that matters more than people give it credit for.

the elevation rotor question is the honest painful answer -- yes you really do want it eventually. you CAN plan sessions around when the moon is within maybe 3-5 degrees of your horizon and just tilt manually or prop the antenna up at a fixed angle, some guys do exactly that to get started. but the moon moves faster than you expect and youll get frustrated. mechanical elevation doesn't have to be expensive, some people make surprisingly functional ones from surplus hardware. but if youre serious about making regular contacts and not just catching the occasional lucky window, elevation control is kind of necessary. start without it, see if you catch the bug hard enough to justify the project, thats my advice.

I run a 4x17el array on 2m and even that took me a while to get consistent QSOs going. the path loss on EME is brutal, something like 252 dB on 2m, so every dB you can squeeze out of your system actually matters. that said i worked my first moonbounce QSO with a borrowed 2x9el setup and 100w so it definitely is doable with modest gear now that JT65 is the thing everyone uses.

one thing nobody told me when i started was how much the moon's position relative to perigee vs apogee changes your path loss by a couple dB and that actually makes a difference on a marginal station. there are good resources on the WSJT-X site and the VHF contesting groups usually have EME nets or email lists where the regulars will literally help you plan your first attempt if you ask. people in that community are generally pretty welcoming to new stations because more activity is good for everyone. just dont expect it to happen fast, my first actual completed QSO took three separate moon passes before we got all the exchanges through