so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff with some 2m weak signal on the side, and ive always been kind of fascinated by the idea of moonbounce but every time i start reading about it i get overwhelmed and close the tab lol. figured id just ask here because the wiki stuff is dense.

my current 2m setup is a 7 element yagi and an IC-9700, which i know is nowhere near enough but im wondering like... whats the realistic minimum to even attempt a contact. ive seen people say you can do it with a single yagi and JT65 now which honestly sounds insane to me. is that actually true or is that the kind of thing where technically possible means 1 contact in 6 months if youre lucky.

also the elevation rotor situation confuses me. do you absolutely need az/el or can you work the moon during certain windows with just azimuth. my current rotor is just a regular TV antenna rotator that i hacked together for the yagi so thats obviously not going to cut it even for az. been looking at the Yaesu G-5500 as a starting point. anyway just trying to figure out if this is something i can realistically work toward without building a 10m dish in my backyard

the single yagi EME thing is real but you need to set expectations correctly. with JT65B or Q65 and a decent preamp you can make contacts on 2m EME with a single long yagi, like a 17 or 21 element M2 or similar, but youre going to be working other big stations mostly. the path loss on 2m EME is around 252 dB which is just brutal, so every dB you can squeeze out of the system matters a lot. your IC-9700 is actually fine for this, its a solid radio for weak signal work. the weak link for you would be antenna gain and a good low noise preamp at the feedpoint, like a 0.3 dB or better NF unit.

and yeah the G-5500 is basically the go-to starting point for az/el, everyone uses it or something similar. you technically can catch the moon with az only during perigee windows near the horizon but its not practical for regular operating. just get the G-5500 and a decent controller and youll be set. honestly the software side has gotten so good with WSJT-X and moon tracking programs that a lot of the complexity thats always scared people off is just handled automatically now.

i was in basically the exact same spot two years ago and just jumped in with a 4x9el array and the G-5500, made my first EME contact within the first weekend of trying and i was honestly shocked. Q65 has kind of changed the game a bit compared to when it was all JT65. the community on the ON4KST chat is super active and people will literally wait for you to get set up and point at the moon if you announce youre trying for a first contact, really welcoming group for something that sounds intimidating from the outside.