so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and mostly do HF stuff, some 2m SSB when the band opens up nicely, but ive always been kind of obsessed with the idea of EME. like the concept that you can bounce a signal off the freaking moon and have someone on the other side of the planet hear it is just wild to me even after all this time.

anyway i started actually looking into what it would take and i have to say the rabbit hole goes deep. i know the basic math, path loss on 2m EME is something like 252 dB which is just an insane number when you think about it. so clearly you need serious antenna gain and a decent power amp. ive been reading about people running 4x yagi arrays which seems more realistic than a big dish for my situation, im in a suburban lot and the HOA is already not thrilled with my existing 2el for 2m.

what im confused about is the receive side. i know a lot of guys run a separate preamp right at the feedpoint which makes sense, but im reading conflicting things about how critical the feedline run is and whether i need to actually get into cryogenic LNA territory or if a good quality low noise preamp like the SSB Electronics ones is sufficient for making some initial contacts. also is JT65 the mode everyone is using now or has that changed? i see some references to Q65 which i think is newer? basically just trying to figure out if this is even doable without a farm and a 30 foot dish

Q65 has basically taken over from JT65 for EME at this point, at least on 2m. the sensitivity is a bit better and it handles the doppler spread more gracefully which matters a lot depending on where the moon is in its orbit. you can still find JT65 activity but if you're starting fresh just go Q65, you'll have more potential contacts especially with the smaller pistol stations.

on your antenna question, 4 yagis is very doable for initial EME contacts. guys have done it with 2 yagis and decent power honestly, maybe 400-500W at the feed. the preamp situation is real though, you absolutely want low NF at the antenna, like sub 0.5 dB if you can manage it. the SSB Elec units are fine, people use them all the time. cryogenic is fantastic if you want the last dB or two but its not where you start. the feedline matters a ton, you want it as short as physically possible. some guys mount the preamp on a relay right at the antenna so it switches with PTT, that's honestly the way to go even if it's a bit of wiring work.

the bigger challenge honestly for a suburban lot is going to be elevation. you need to track the moon obviously so you need at least some elevation capability, which complicates the HOA situation. worth looking into what your actual moon windows look like from your location before you spend a ton on hardware.

i got my first EME qso last year with a 4x9el array and an old Henry amp running about 800w, so yeah its doable without a giant dish. took me a while to get the sequencer right so i wasnt blowing up the preamp every transmission but once that was sorted it worked. Q65B or Q65C depending on conditions is what everyone seems to use now on 144.

honestly the hardest part for me wasnt the RF stuff it was getting the az/el rotators dialed in and the software talking to everything correctly. i use WSJT-X and a separate rotator control program and getting those to play nice took more time than the antenna build