Sixteen young radio and telegraph operators landed in Skagway on 18 May. One of them, Bob Rapuzzi was actually from Skagway and he took the opportunity to visit family prior to boarding the WP&YT. The 843rd distributed operators, two per company through the 93rd and the 340th regiments. Rapuzzi and his partner, Tom Whitsett, wound up with the 93rd Regiment. Radio range was only 25 miles so operators had to move constantly. Rapuzzi and Whitsett moved in a radio car with a whip antenna – providing communication between companies up and down the road.
The extreme north was as unkind to radios as it was to compasses. During extremely cold weather or especially powerful displays of northern lights the radios refused to work. By the summer of 1942, the 843rd was part of an effort to install telephone lines along the road. Together military and civilian crews set 95,000 poles in frozen ground and ran 14,000 miles of wire in fifteen months.