so ive been licensed for about 6 years and done a fair bit of HF DX but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that i never seriously looked into. a buddy of mine worked a few stations on 2m EME last year using JT65 and it kind of lit a fire under me again.

the thing im struggling to wrap my head around is the antenna requirements. i know the path loss is absolutely brutal, something like 250-252 dB on 2m depending on where the moon is, and i keep reading about guys running 4x yagi arrays or even dish setups. but then i occasionally see posts about people making contacts with a single long yagi and a kilowatt and im not sure how realistic that is or if those are just exceptional circumstances.

my current situation is i have a pretty open backyard, i could probably get away with a 2x2 array without too many complaints from the neighbors if i keep it reasonable looking. i have a solid state amp that does around 600w on 2m. is that even in the ballpark or am i kidding myself. and whats the deal with preamps, ive read that the receive side matters almost as much as transmit for this mode

the receive side honestly might matter more than the transmit side, at least up to a point. a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint is not optional for EME, its basically table stakes. you want something in the 0.3-0.5 dB noise figure range minimum, guys like SSB Electronics and Kuhne make good stuff for 2m. mounting it at the antenna and not in the shack is the difference between copying a signal and not even knowing its there.

as for the antenna question, single yagi EME is a thing but youre pretty much limited to working the big guns, stations with massive arrays or dishes. with a 2x2 and 600w youre in what i'd call the small pistol category but youre absolutely workable. plenty of guys are running similar setups on JT65 and making contacts, just not going to be calling CQ and having a pile up. more like calling CQ for a while and eventually somebody big hears you. the key thing beyond the antenna and power is honestly the coax loss between the array and the amp, keep that as short and low loss as you possibly can because every tenth of a dB counts at this level.

yeah what he said about the preamp is spot on. i made the mistake of running my preamp in the shack for the first few months and i was wondering why i could barely decode anything even when wsjt was showing traces. moved it to the mast and it was like a completely different hobby, seriously night and day.

one thing i'd add is dont underestimate how much time you spend just learning when the moon is at a usable elevation for your location and which direction you need to point. sounds obvious but there's a learning curve to just the scheduling and geometry side before you ever even get to the rf stuff. keplerian elements and moon tracking software is your friend, i use MoonSked and it works fine. also the EME2 reflector is where most of the serious activity gets coordinated still, worth subscribing even just to lurk for a while before you start calling