Knut Haugland Heyerdahl in 1944 at a paramilitary training camp in England. It was here that Haugland first heard of Heyerdahl's theories about Polynesian migration patterns, and his plans to cross the Pacific on a balsa wood raft. In 1947 Haugland was invited by Heyerdahl to join the Kon-Tiki expedition as a radio operator. On the expedition Haugland and Torstein Raaby (another former resistance member) were in frequent radio contact with American amateur operators, sending meteorological and hydrographic data to be passed on to the Meteorological Institute in Washington, DC. Despite the tiny radio which had an output of only 6 watts,
Kon-Tiki expedition The crew once used a hand-cranked emergency transmitter to send out an "all well, all well" message "just in time to head off a massive rescue attempt". 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. "Kon-Tiki" left Callao, Peru, on the afternoon of April 28, 1947. To avoid coastal traffic it was initially towed out by the Fleet Tug "Guardian Rios" of the Peruvian Navy, then