so i've been on HF for about 12 years now and always kind of dismissed EME as something only guys with huge yagi arrays in their backyard could do, but my buddy K7RXT convinced me to try it with my existing 2m setup and honestly it was more accessible than i expected, at least the digital side of it

i was running JT65B through WSJT-X with a single 9 element yagi pointed at the moon and about 150 watts from my TS-2000, i managed to decode a few stations including what looked like a EA8 but couldnt complete the QSO before the moon went below my horizon. close though

my question is really about where the ceiling is with minimal setups like mine. ive been reading about guys running 4x4 arrays and kilowatts and i get that thats the gold standard but is there a realistic middle ground? like would going to a pair of yagis and a higher efficiency preamp make a meaningful difference or am i still just going to be marginal on completeing contacts? also my current preamp is an older SSB Electronics unit, probably 15 years old, is there a significant jump in performance going to something like an Airspy-era LNA or one of the modern masthead units?

the latency of waiting for the moon window is kind of addicting honestly, didnt expect that

yeah the single yagi EME thing is totally doable on JT65B, people have been doing it for years, the mode really opened the door for smaller stations. that said theres a pretty noticeable jump going from 1 to 2 yagis, youre looking at roughly 3dB more gain plus you can start playing with the phasing harness to get some polarization flexibility which matters more than people think for EME because of Faraday rotation

the preamp question is a big one. if your SSB Electronics unit is original vintage and hasnt been recapped or touched, the noise figure might have drifted a bit, those things were fine for their era but a modern unit like the Kuhne or even a well built homebrew LNA with a good GaAs FET can get you down to 0.3-0.4dB NF which makes a real difference when youre fishing signals out of the noise floor. the key is getting the preamp as close to the feedpoint as physically possible, every foot of coax between the antenna and the LNA is eating into your system noise figure

also make sure youre checking the online EME chat on ON4KST, thats where most of the activity coordination happens now, nobody just calls blind anymore on 144.120 unless its a big contest period

the EA8 stations on 2m EME are pretty active, theres a few of them with serious arrays so decoding them on a single yagi sounds about right. completing is tougher because they need to hear you back

i ran a similar setup for about a year before i added a second yagi and honestly the difference in completed QSOs was pretty dramatic, not just marginal. went from a handful of partials to actually finishing contacts consistently. still not running big power either, just the legal limit here. its not just about your receive side, the other station has to pull you out too and more antenna helps both ways obviously

dont overlook the coax situation either if you havent already. anything lossy between the radio and the yagi is just killing you twice, once on tx and once on rx. a lot of guys underestimate that part