I believe you can hit it with an HT, although the Youtube videos I've seen of doing it have been an HT with a hand-held Yagi cabled in in place of the usual whip antenna. A resonant dipole would probably pick it up - as others have said, the signal's fairly powerful.

Satellite comms is something I want to play with, personally, so I welcome this news. Need to get my Foundation license (UK) before I can go two-way, though.