so ive been licensed for about 8 years now mostly doing HF stuff, some 2m weak signal when conditions are good, but ive always had EME in the back of my head as this kind of ultimate goal. finally have a property where i can put up something substantial and im trying to figure out what a realistic entry level EME station actually looks like in.

i know the old school guys were running massive yagi arrays and kilowatt amps but from what ive been reading JT65 and now Q65 have kind of changed the game? like people are actually making contacts with 4 yagis instead of needing a 16 or 32 bay array. is that actually real or is it more like yeah technically possible but you'll only ever work other big stations.

my current thinking is start with 2x9el yagis on 2m, run maybe 500-600w into them, get the preamp situation sorted out at the feedpoint. i have a IC-9700 which i know isnt ideal for EME because of the internal processing but i can run it through WSJT-X fine i think. is this a setup that would realistically get contacts or am i kidding myself. the path loss on EME is brutal, ive done the math, just want to hear from people who've actually done it

yeah Q65 really did change things, not gonna oversell it but it genuinely opened the door for smaller stations. i worked my first EME contact in 2021 with 2x11el M2 yagis and an old Mirage 1kw brick, maybe 700w actually making it to the feed after the coax losses. it took me about 3 weekends of trying before i completed a contact but it happened. you're not going to be running up a huge score against the big gun stations with 4x28el dishes but for initial contacts and working other small stations it's realistic.

the preamp placement is huge, way more important than most people realize when they're starting. i had my first preamp in the shack and my NF was atrocious. moved to a cavity preamp right at the mast and the difference was night and day. EME2 preamps are popular, SSB electronics stuff is good, anything that gets your system noise figure down under 0.5 dB is the goal. the IC-9700 is fine for this, people do EME with it, the phase noise is not ideal but it's workable especially on receive.

also join the Moon-Net mailing list if you havent already, old school but thats where the serious EME ops still coordinate skeds and there's a ton of archived knowledge in there

2x9el is gonna be tight but doable. honestly your limiting factor at that aperture is going to be working out who you can actually complete with. big stations will hear you fine, problem is whether they have time to dig you out when theyre being called by 30 other stations during the peak window. i'd push toward 4 yagis if the space allows it, the extra 3dB makes a noticeable difference in completion rates not just signal levels.

one thing nobody really talks about enough is the elevation rotor situation. you need to be tracking the moon pretty accurately or you lose gain at inopportune moments and on 2m with a 9el the beamwidth is relatively forgiving but still. i used a cheap azimuth-elevation setup for a while and the slop in the elevation axis cost me more than i thought it would. something to budget for.