Communications
The expedition carried an amateur radio station with the call sign of LI2B operated by former World War II Norwegian underground radio operators Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby. Haugland and Raaby maintained regular communication with a number of American, Canadian, and South American stations that relayed Kon Tiki's status to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C. On August 5, Haugland made contact with a station in Oslo, Norway, 10,000 miles away. Kon Tiki's transmitters were powered by batteries and a hand-cranked generator and operated on the 40-, the 20-meter band, the 10-meter band, and the 6-meter band. Each unit was water resistant and included 2E30 vacuum tubes providing 10 watts of RF input. A German Mark V transceiver was used as a backup unit.
The radio receiver used throughout the voyage was a National Radio Company NC-173, once requiring a thorough drying out after being soaked during a shipwreck. An "all well, all well" message was sent via LI2B to notify would-be rescuers of the crew's safety.
The call sign LI2B was used by Heyerdahl again in 1969–70, when he built a papyrus reed raft and sailed from Morocco to Barbados in an attempt to show a possible link between the civilization of ancient Egypt and the New World.
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