so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF and some 2m weak signal stuff but EME has always been this thing in the back of my mind that i never actually committed to. well i pulled the trigger on a used 3m dish from a guy a few counties over and now im kind of staring at it in my garage wondering what i actually got myself into.

the dish is solid, aluminum surface looks okay, probably needs a new feedhorn situation. im on 2m primarily, maybe 70cm later if i survive this project. from what ive been reading it sounds like i need to think about this in terms of total system noise figure and EIRP basically and that the antenna gain alone doesnt tell the whole story. running an IC-9700 right now which i know isnt ideal for EME but ive seen people do decent things with it using good preamps.

main questions are what kind of low noise preamp are people actually running these days, i keep seeing EME references to down to 0.3 or 0.4 dB NF setups and is that actually necessary for initial contacts or can you get away with something a little warmer especially running JT65. also is the sequencer situation as critical as everyone makes it sound, ive fried a preamp before on 2m terrestrial just being sloppy with PTT timing so i get why but curious if people are running hardware sequencers or software only.

sorry for the wall of text, just trying to get the lay of the land before i start spending money in the wrong direction

3m dish on 2m is a solid start, you're looking at maybe 26-27 dBd depending on surface accuracy and feed efficiency so that's workable. the NF thing is real though, like not optional real. at 144 MHz the difference between a 0.4 dB and a 1.2 dB preamp is actually audible on moon noise and it directly affects whether you're copying the other stations period. most serious stations are running cavity preamps or the Kuhne stuff, MKU LNA series. the 0.3-0.4 dB NF targets are achievable without going crazy, Kuhne MKU 144 B is popular and reasonably priced relative to building something from scratch.

the sequencer is absolutely not optional in my opinion. software sequencer through the radio is too slow and too dependent on your computer not hiccuping at the wrong moment. a proper hardware sequencer like the ones from W6PQL or similar, it just removes the variable from the equation. i ran without one for about three weeks when i started and killed a preamp on day two. never again. the IC-9700 actually has decent integration for this stuff but i still use a standalone sequencer and let the radio key the amp through it.

JT65 is forgiving enough that you dont need to be at the absolute noise floor limit to make contacts, plenty of initial contacts happen with setups that are slightly compromised. get the preamp right first, everything else is iterative.

yeah i did my first EME contact with a 4x9el yagi array and the 9700 so the dish is definitely overkill for getting started lol. not that thats a bad thing. one thing that bites people on dishes is the feedhorn positioning, if that's off even a little you lose a ton of efficiency and it doesnt always look wrong visually. worth doing the math on focal length and checking actual feed placement before you assume the surface is the problem if you're getting disappointing results.

also just practically speaking, are you in a location where you can track the moon? like do you have a rotator setup yet or is that still on the list. az/el control is kind of the other big piece that people sometimes underestimate in terms of wiring and controller complexity especially if you're adapting a commercial dish mount that wasnt designed for amateur use