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Radio operator turned geologist in the North Pole !
Ernest Krenkel, the author of the book "REAM is my Call-sign", is a famed Soviet polar explorer. His preoccupation with the North began in 1924 when he got the job of a radio operator at the Novaya Zemlya polar station, his career spanning many years of work in the North.Krenkel was a radio operator at polar stations and ships going on expeditions. He took part in the record-breaking voyage of the "Alexander Sibiriakov" ice-breaker, which covered the entire Northern Sea Route in a single navigation season. A year later Krenkel a radio operator on the "Cheliuskin", sent the now famous radiogram that the ship had perished and the crew pitched camp on the ice. In 1937 he was among the celebrated Papanin's team of four as the radio operator of the North Pole, the first drifting radio station.In 1930, he established a link between the Franz-Josef Land and the Antarctic, a record in long-distance radio communication. Later Krenkel, the radio operator turned a Geologist and was in charge of the Research Institute of Hydrometerological Instrument Making.