so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF work, some weak signal VHF stuff on 2m, but EME has always been this thing on the back of my mind that seems completely out of reach and i dont really know why i keep putting it off. i think part of it is i genuinely dont know if my setup is even close to viable.

right now i have a 7 element yagi for 2m and a solid preamp, running about 200 watts out of an old Kenwood. from what ive read youre basically looking at needing a big dish or a yagi array to make contacts but ive also seen people claim they worked the moon with modest setups using JT65B or whatever the current mode is. so whats actually realistic here. do i need to go full 4x11 element array or can i squeak by with what i have for at least a first contact, even if its only with the big guns on the other end doing all the heavy lifting

also the EME delay thing, does the software handle that automatically or is that something you have to manually account for. i know the signal takes a little over 2 seconds round trip and i assume WSJT-X knows about this but im not totally sure

your 7 ele isn't going to cut it on its own, not really, at least not for random EME where you're calling CQ and hoping someone hears you. that said for skeds with a big station, like a 10m dish or a massive array on the other end, you might actually pull off a contact running JT65B. the mode is incredibly sensitive and people have done EME with smaller setups than you'd think.

the delay is handled automatically by WSJT-X yeah, it knows the propagation time and sequences the transmit and receive windows accordingly, you dont have to do anything manual there. what you do need to worry about is having your system clock synced to within about a second, use Meinberg NTP or GPS disciplined clock if you can, because if your timing is off the whole thing falls apart.

honestly the biggest thing holding back smaller stations isnt the antenna as much as it is noise floor. whats your receive setup like, feedline, preamp placement, that kind of thing. a really good low noise preamp right at the antenna can make a bigger difference than adding another yagi in some cases.

i got my first EME contact on 2m with a single 11 element yagi and 400 watts, worked a EA8 station with a big array. took a while and i had to send my call about a dozen times but it happened. the key really is finding someone specifically willing to work you, just going on random calling frequency with a small station is rough. there are EME scheduling sites, the main one people use is EMElogger or you can coordinate on the usual clusters.

one thing nobody told me before i started was how much polarization matters. i had my yagi horizontal and was losing probably 3dB at times because the path geometry was rotating the polarization, circular polarization or at least being able to rotate your feed helps a lot but obviously thats more complexity. for a first contact dont let it stop you, just something to be aware of when you're scratching your head wondering where the signal went