'Kon-Tiki' radio ham - Silent Key

Knut Magne Haugland, LA3KY, of Norway, passed away on December 25. He was 92.

Haugland was one of six men, who with Thor Heyerdahl in 1947, successfully crossed the Pacific Ocean in a 45 foot raft made of balsa wood and bamboo - named Kon-Tiki - to prove that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.

Called the "most unusual expedition ever to place reliance on Amateur Radio for communication" in the December 1947 issue of QST, Kon-Tiki departed Peru for Polynesia on April 28, 1947.

"It was the theory of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnologist and leader of the venture, that the settlement of the Pacific Islands resulted from a migration of American peoples who had sailed there many of years ago, rather than a trek from Asia as claimed by other scientists," the article explained.

"To prove that such a migration was possible, Mr Heyerdahl decided to attempt the trip in a raft of the type preserved in Incan legends and early Spanish historical accounts.
He named the expedition on honor of the pre-Incan Sun god.

"The Kon-Tiki raft was fashioned out of logs of the lightest wood in existence and lashed together with native-made hemp rope. Its only sources of locomotion would be the Pacific trade winds and the Humboldt Current which sweeps northward along the west coast of South America and thence in the direction of the Tuamotu Archipelago."

Read the full, fascinating ARRL article on Haugland at: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2009/12/28/11269/?nc=1

Our thanks to Mike Terry for spotting this item