AMSAT articles about this always kind of bug me. They make it sound like this is really difficult, but has the cool payoff that you can listen to/ talk to astronauts! Unfortunately both of these assumptions are far from reality.<p>For anyone who wants to do this with their kids, I would highly caution you to temper any expectations that they will be able to hear or talk to the crew: while entirely possible and also pretty easy, it's a very rare treat to make a contact. The crew keeps very busy and most do not carry amateur radio licenses.<p>The ISS is a trivial satellite target. I cannot overstate the ease of receiving it compared to other satellites. A $20 radio like a Baofeng UV5R or an RTLSDR dongle is all you need. A fancy directional antenna, worrying about doppler shift, tracking its position, etc. are not necessary with ISS to listen to the FM 145.800MHz voice or 145.825 (1200 baud AFSK ax.25) packet radio downlinks. Voice activity is incredibly rare as I mentioned, but packet activity is nearly constant as it consists of ground stations relaying through the ISS digipeater. If you want to be sure your setup is working, listen for packet data. You should also check online to make sure the digipeater is currently operational. For various reasons, it is sometimes offline.<p>Most of the ISS packet traffic is APRS and include position data which you can decode with a cell phone or a computer (or a radio that supports APRS or packet). It's fun to watch a visible pass while monitoring the traffic to see where it's all coming from. My kids who are typically not terribly interested in my nerd hobbies enjoy this particular one quite a lot.