I'm going to listen with my HT and a Diamond SRH320A triband duck just to see what I hear. Minimalist stations can be a lot of fun, even if they are frustrating at times.
The project--called Radioskaf or Radio Sputnik was led by project manager A. P. Alexandrov and Deputy Project Manager A. Poleshuk from RSC Energia. On the US side, AMSAT Board member Lou McFadin, W5DID headed up the hardware project development. The SuitSat electronics were built and tested in Phoenix, AZ by a team lead by Steve Bible, N7HPR.
No Kidding.I remember back when Owen Garriot conducted the first live "Ham in space" experiment on the Columbia. I was scheduled to be out of town the first day so I stuck my IC25A and a mag mount in the company truck and W5LFL came into range as I was going north somewhere near Longview WA. Jumped in and made several calls along with probably about every other Ham in the area. I did hear him QSL a call I recognized from the pileup and that other operator did try to carry on but the pileup resumed after about five seconds.
In the days of U2MIR I was active in Packet and ran a full service BBS. During one weekend I set up a port on the BBS to work the mailbox on the space station and did manage to make a contact and exchange a couple of messages with it. At that time I was using some combination of transciever/amp that fed about 160W into a Phelps-Dodge Stationmaster. Still an omni but with a narrow angle of radiation that has a good signal at the horizon. I think that was during the time after the USSR collapse while Sergi was still stranded up there waiting for a new country to rise up and come get him. To help pass the time he was doing everything imaginable with the Ham station. Poor guy, I don't think anyone has spent as much time in space and he was up there all by himself. When Russia was finally able to launch a Soyuz craft and send up a new crew the callsign was changed to R2MIR, IIRC.