so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and always kind of dismissed moonbounce as something only the big gun stations with acres of yagis could do but then i worked a guy last month on 2m who said he was doing JT65 EME with like a single 9 element yagi and 100 watts and honestly that broke my brain a little

now im down a rabbit hole and i cant figure out where the realistic floor is for getting started. i have a FT-991A and could probably build or buy something reasonable for an antenna. is the 9 element thing actually real or was that guy exaggerating, and what are the actual minimums people are seeing for initiating contacts these days vs like 10 years ago when i assume it was harder

also whats the deal with the dish setups i keep seeing, is that 432 and up territory mostly or do people run dishes on 2m too

yeah the single yagi EME thing is real but there are some caveats worth knowing. the JT65 mode basically made single yagi EME possible in the first place, before that you were looking at multiple yagis minimum just to have any shot. now with JT65 and even Q65 which is getting more popular a decent 2m station with something like a 12-17 element long yagi and a good preamp at the feedpoint can make contacts but mostly with the big stations who have db to spare

the preamp placement is probably the thing people underestimate most. you want it at the feedpoint not in the shack, every bit of coax loss before the LNA kills you because the moon signal is already insanely weak. probably looking at 0.3-0.5 dB NF or better. coax from feedpoint to shack matters less after a good LNA

as for dishes, yeah mostly 432 and up, 23cm and 13cm are popular dish bands. on 2m a dish gets physically huge real fast for it to be useful so most people stick with yagi arrays. ive seen some creative H-frame 4-yagi setups that are manageable for a suburban lot if you have az/el rotors

the az/el rotor situation is probably what stopped me from doing this for years tbh. tracking the moon isnt like tracking a satellite, the window can be several hours but you still need motorized elevation or youre leaving a ton of time on the table. i eventually cobbled together a setup using a surplus TV dish positioner for elevation and an old Yaesu G-800 for azimuth and it works okay but the software integration was a headache

im using WSJT-X with the built in tracking if you point it at a proper interface, theres also stuff like Moon Sked for planning when your window overlaps with europe or JA which is when most of the activity happens anyway. if your window is middle of the night with nobody around youre going to be sitting there calling CQ into the void

honestly just get on the 2m EME reflector email list and lurk for a while before spending money, theres a lot of accumulated knowledge there and people post their contest results which gives you a realistic picture of whats possible at different power and antenna levels