I had always thought that expensive equipment was involved to do this, but have been shown that it can be done with fairly modest equipment... check out this video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=liqqIweZ3eQ
A new satellite in orbit, AO-85 (aka fox 1) reportably is easier to work than most as it uses a 2 meter rather than the more common 70 cm downlink frequencies. I have monitored several passes of this and SO-50 on my Icom 8500, using just a discone antenna, which would have fairly poor gain for overhead signals...need to build a handheld Yagi like the guy in the video is holding.
Any recommendations for a good handheld transciever?
jr