so ive been licensed for about 8 years now and done a lot of HF stuff, some 2m weak signal, but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that seemed completely out of reach. talked to a guy at the club last month who actually does it regularly and now i cant stop thinking about it

my main question is just... what does a realistic entry level EME setup actually look like in 2024. i know the old school guys were running massive yagi arrays and high power amps but ive been reading that WSJT-X and JT65 kind of changed the game for smaller stations. is a single long yagi on 2m actually viable or am i kidding myself. i have maybe a 100 foot run of coax to deal with which i know is going to hurt

also curious what kind of contact rate people are seeing. like is this something where you sit at the window and work a handful of stations or is it more like you spend a weekend and maybe get 2 contacts if you're lucky. not complaining either way just trying to set expectations before i go dropping money on an EME capable setup

the WSJT modes really did change everything for smaller stations, that part is true. i ran my first EME contact on 2m with a single 9el yogi and about 200w, took forever to find a station that would hear me but it happened. the 100 foot coax run is a real problem though — at 144 mhz youre going to lose a significant chunk of your signal before it even gets to the antenna. people usually deal with this by putting a mast mounted preamp up at the feedpoint for receive, that alone makes a huge difference. on transmit you either shorten the run, use LMR-600 or hardline, or honestly put the amp up at the mast too which is what the serious guys do

contact rate on single yagi is going to be slow. you'll be mostly running with stations that have big arrays, they can hear you even if you can barely hear them. weekends when there are organized EME contests or activity periods are your best bet. look up the ARRL EME contest and the various club-sponsored events, those are when the activity is high enough that a small station can actually work stuff. patience is the main thing, its not like working DX on 20m

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you, been lurking on the EME reflectors for a while now. from what ive gathered the minimum people usually talk about for a realistic shot at digital EME on 2m is something like a single long yagi, 7 or 9 elements at minimum, and at least 100 watts at the feedpoint — meaning after your line loss. so if youre losing 2-3db in that coax run you need to account for that in your amp sizing

the azimuth/elevation rotor situation is something nobody warned me about until i started asking around. you need to be able to track the moon obviously and if your current setup is just a az rotor for HF antennas that might not cut it. theres some guys doing it with creative fixed elevation setups and just waiting for the moon to pass through their window but thats pretty limiting

i havent made my first contact yet so take all this with a grain of salt lol but thats what ive been reading on the moon-net mailing list