so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that seems completely out of reach but i keep reading about guys making contacts on 2m with modest setups and now im not so sure its as impossible as i thought. did a bunch of reading last weekend and now i have more questions than answers which is probably normal

my current 2m setup is an IC-9700 into a 9 element yagi at about 30 feet which i know is nowhere near enough for traditional EME but ive seen people mention digital modes like JT65 and stuff and apparently that changes the math considerably. is that actually true or is there still a hard floor on antenna gain you need before its even worth attempting

also what is the actual minimum realistic setup people have had success with? like does my radio matter as much as the antenna situation? ive got a fairly low noise location, maybe S1 background on a quiet night. would love to hear from people who have actually done this rather than just reading spec sheets because a lot of what i find online sounds like it was written to sell me a preamp

yeah the digital modes changed everything for weak signal EME, no question. JT65 and now Q65 especially - guys are making contacts on 2m EME with setups that would have been laughed off the reflector 20 years ago. ive worked EME with a single 17el yagi and an IC-9700 with a good preamp at the feedpoint, so your radio is actually not the weak link here. the preamp placement is huge - you want it at the antenna, not in the shack, otherwise youre just amplifying coax noise.

that said your 9 element is going to be a real limiting factor. most guys running single yagi EME are using something in the 17-21 element range to get enough gain to even hear the echoes on digital. maybe look at a long boom design, K1FO style or similar. your low noise location is genuinely valuable though, dont undersell that. some guys are fighting urban RFI and you already have something they'd kill for. id say get a good low noise preamp like an SSB Electronics or a Kuhne up at the feedpoint first and see what you can decode before committing to a bigger antenna investment

honestly similar boat to you, just started actually attempting EME contacts this past fall. the thing nobody really warned me about was the moon windows - like even when you have everything working you only have maybe a few hours where the geometry is actually favorable and the moon is high enough and not too much doppler shift happening. spent my first two weekends just figuring out the timing before i even worried about whether my signal was getting out

Q65 on 2m is where its at right now for smaller stations, way better than JT65 for this. WSJT-X handles all of it and theres a whole schedule system on the EME2 reflector where people post skeds so you're not just calling CQ into the void. made my first EME qso with like a 4x9el array on the other end which tells you something about what the big guns can pull out of the noise. your 9700 is fine, preamp is everything