so ive been on HF for about 8 years and VHF/UHF for the last three, mostly doing terrestrial stuff, some meteor scatter on 6m and 2m. been reading about EME for a while now and i think i want to actually try it but every time i start researching the equipment side i kind of spiral and close the browser tab

my current 2m setup is a single 9el yagi and an IC-9700. i know thats nowhere near enough for CW EME but ive been reading that JT65 and the newer Q65 modes have kind of changed what the minimum station looks like? someone at the club said you can work EME with a single yagi and 100w now which sounds insane to me but maybe not? he might have been exaggerating

anyway what does a realistic entry level EME station actually look like in and how long does it typically take before you're actually making contacts, not just hearing echoes of the big guns. also is the preamp placement as critical as everyone says or is that kind of overstated

your club guy wasnt totally wrong but its a bit more nuanced than that. single yagi on 2m with Q65 is doable but you're mostly going to be working the big stations - like the 4x4 array guys in europe - and even then it depends a lot on your sky noise situation and your feedline losses. the IC-9700 is actually a solid radio for this, the receiver isnt bad at all, main thing is getting a good low noise preamp right at the antenna, not in the shack. that part is not overstated, it really does matter, ive seen people lose 2-3dB just from having 20 feet of LMR between the antenna and the first stage of amplification and on EME that 2-3dB is the difference between making a contact and spending the night decoding nothing

for power, honestly more is better but people do make QSOs on 2m EME with 100w into a single yagi. you wont have a huge pile of stations calling you but you can get into the log. i'd say realistic expectation is your first actual QSO might take a few sessions to happen, you need to line up with someone who has a big enough station to pull you out. WSJT-X is your friend, get familiar with the Q65 submodes and watch the reversal timing carefully, that trips up a lot of new EME ops

preamp placement is absolutely not overstated, that was the first thing i got wrong when i started. had mine at the bottom of the mast thinking it'd be fine and my system noise figure was embarrassingly bad. moved it to within a foot of the feedpoint and it was like a completely different antenna. use a good relay too, the cheap ones add noise on receive

also worth mentioning - check the EME2 reflector and the ON4KST chat, thats where basically all the skeds happen. just lurking on there for a few weeks before you transmit will teach you more about how the actual operating works than any amount of reading. people are pretty helpful to new EME stations as long as you've done some homework first