It was a perfectly normal Sunday morning. Gustl Großsignal, OE0GGS, was sitting in front of his laptop configuring his handheld. For the third time this week. Why it wasn’t working again, he didn’t quite know — something wasn’t working again. As usual.
Meanwhile, his base station was waiting for a firmware update. And the portable too. Gustl updates religiously. What’s different afterwards, he usually doesn’t know — but up-to-date is up-to-date.
Then the first WhatsApp message arrived.
“Gustl, have you read it yet?”
Gustl hadn’t read anything. Gustl generally reads very little, except manuals — and even those only up to the point where it gets complicated.
“Read what?”
“The article. About you.”
Gustl frowned. About him? Gustl is not the kind of person who appears in newspapers. At best, he appears in SOTAdata — theoretically. In practice, he doesn’t, because he forgets to log. But that’s another story.
He put the handheld aside. The codeplug wasn’t finished anyway.
Over the next few hours, every second OM Gustl came into contact with brought up the same topic. And that was — for the sake of completeness — not terribly many.
All without a link. All with the same suggestion: “Check oeradio.at.”
Gustl checked.
Nothing.
He searched again. Nothing. He asked his son whether he might be searching wrong. The son looked. Also nothing. “Dad, there’s no article.”
“But so many people told me there is one.”
“Then it’s gone.”
Gustl leaned back. An article. About him. That’s gone. That he never read. On a Sunday morning.
He reached for the radio and called on the repeater: “Has anyone saved this article?”
Silence.
Of course silence. It’s always silence when Gustl calls. Besides, he’d messed up some setting again. He didn’t notice until an hour later.
Gustl thought for a moment. Then he opened ChatGPT and typed: “Write me a complaint email to the editors, but politely.” ChatGPT promptly delivered a three-page draft. Gustl admired it proudly. When Hansl Hohlleiter explained two minutes later that you don’t write complaint emails about satire, the answer was, as always: “Oh, I totally missed that.”
He turned back to oeradio.at. Searched again. Found nothing about himself — but did find an interesting article about antenna analysers.
“Hansl, is that the article about me?”
“Gustl. That’s a report about antenna tuners.”
“Ah. Could fit though.”
Both rigs reported: update complete. Gustl looked at them. Something would be different again. What exactly — no idea.
The handheld, by the way, was still not finished being configured.
But you know what? Without the Gustls of this world, amateur radio would be nothing but a collection of bitter technicians correcting each other’s signal reports. The Gustls bring the joy. The enthusiasm. The sacred earnestness with which one searches for a vanished article one has never read.
So, Gustl: carry on. Keep configuring. Keep searching. Keep calling on the repeater, even when nobody answers.
Someday the article will turn up again.
Probably right when the codeplug is finally done.
73 de Hansl Hohlleiter, OE0HHL — who has, of course, saved the article. But won’t send it. Because some things are better left to die as legend. And because Gustl is busy with the codeplug anyway.
Transparency Notice
This article is satire. Gustl Großsignal and his callsign OE0GGS are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to living or operating persons is purely coincidental — but statistically inevitable, because every local radio club has at least one Gustl.
