Karl-Arne Markström wrote:
>If I remember the exhibition in the Oslo Kon-Tiki museum correctly,
>at least one of the transmitters was the British "suitcase set" that was known
>as "Berit"
>in the Norwegian resistance movement. It was a very simple CO-PA unit
>that was either mains or battery operated, and had an extremely wide-range
>output circuit that could match literally anything. (A picture can be found
>on http://fykse.dnsalias.com/radio/nrhf/ at about the middle of the page).
>
>
Yes, those are probably the last-mentioned transmitters in the following
additional text from December 1947 QST:
"Other equipment...included a hand-cranked emergency set of the Gibson
Girl type for 500 and 8280 kc., a special v.h.f. set for contacting
aircraft, both provided by the U. S. War Department, and two of the
famous British 3-16 Mc. Mark II transmitters (dropped by the hundreds in
all occupied countries during the war)."
Kon-Tiki's call, by the way, was LI2B.
I didn't keep my own NC-173 very long; it was terrible for CW QSK using
a separate receiving antenna. Something in the front end would charge
up in the presence of strong signals (i.e., from my own Heath DX-40) and
take forever to discharge to the point where I could hear again. I used
to run semi-QSK on the traffic nets by switching the bandswitch to
another band while transmitting!
One "wag" (whom I shall not name) replied privately to me that probably
the Kon-Tiki team took the NC-173 along to do double duty as the raft's
anchor! That could well be, judging by Heyerdahl's frequent
descriptions of techniques the crew devised to periodically remove salt
water from the radio equipment to make it operational....
Bud, W2RU
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