Every community has one. Someone who always smiles, is always helpful, always has a kind word. Someone everyone likes — and who wants everyone to like them. Until you look more closely. Your Hansl took a closer look. And what he found tastes sweet. Too sweet.
Willi: The Nicest OM in the Land
Willi is a pleasant person. Everyone who knows him says so. And everyone knows him. On every frequency, in every round, at every field day, at every meeting — Willi is there. And when Willi is there, Willi is nice. Not a little nice. Not normally nice. Willi is nice at a level where a Buddhist monk would say: “Calm down, mate.”
“Kurt, you’re the best operator I know!” “Berndt, your antenna is a work of art!” “Sepp, the club would be nothing without you!” “Helga, your goulash at field day — I wept with joy!” Everyone gets their little spoonful of honey. Every day. Reliable as the beacon signal on 28.200 MHz.
The OMs in the local club gave him a nickname. Not meant maliciously, more affectionately bewildered: Honeypot. Because honey flows from Willi like from a toppled beehive. Some find it charming. Some find it odd. And some — the observant ones — find it suspicious.
You can recognize Willi immediately when he opens his mouth. Not by the tone, not by the frequency — by two words: “My friend.” Willi doesn’t say “Hello Kurt.” Willi says: “Kurt, my friend!” Willi doesn’t say “Thanks Berndt.” Willi says: “Berndt, my friend, what would I do without you!” Everyone is Willi’s friend. From the club chairman to the newly licensed, from the DX hunter to the XYL — all are “my friend.” The phrase has roughly the same significance for Willi as “QRZ” in a contest: it comes automatically, it sounds familiar, and it means essentially nothing.
Phase 1: The Approach
Willi has a pattern. And once you know the pattern, you see it everywhere. It always begins the same way: Willi turns up at your place — by chance, he emphasizes — and is delighted. By you, by your shack, by your mast, by your coffee, by the way you say “CQ.” Everything about you is wonderful. You are the hero Willi has always been waiting for.
“You built that yourself? Incredible! People like you are rare. I unfortunately have two left hands — I admire anyone who can do something like that.” The line about two left hands is important. Remember it. It comes back.
In this phase you also receive: dinner invitations, a bottle of wine at Christmas, spontaneous visits with cake, effusive birthday greetings on the local frequency, and — Willi’s crowning achievement — he mentions you publicly. In the round, at the club, on social media: “Without Kurt I’d be lost. Kurt, now there’s an expert, I tell you. You need someone like him.” You feel flattered. That’s the plan.
And then comes the invitation: “Kurt, my friend, why don’t you come over sometime? Just like that. For a beer. Nice and relaxed. Just the two of us, a little chat.” Sounds nice. Is nice. You sit in Willi’s kitchen, drink Willi’s beer, eat Willi’s pretzels, and Willi tells you how great you are. At some point — between the second and third beer — Willi shows you his shack. “Look, my friend, what I bought. Amazing, right? Just… I can’t quite figure out the connectors. But that’s not important now. Have another one.” It’s always important. And you’ll come back. Not for the beer. For the connectors.
Phase 2: The First Favour
After a few weeks of honey comes the first request. Small, modest, delivered almost apologetically: “Kurt, I have a question. Purely technical. I bought a power supply, but I don’t dare connect it. I have no clue, you know. Could you maybe have a quick look? Just five minutes. And I’ll bring something along!”
Kurt says yes. Of course Kurt says yes. Willi is so nice, and it’s only five minutes. Kurt drives over. Five minutes becomes three hours. The power supply wasn’t the problem — Willi hadn’t wired up the shack at all. But Kurt does it, because he’s there and because Willi serves him a roast pork dinner afterwards and emphasizes three times how grateful he is.
“Kurt, my friend, you’re a treasure. Without you I’d be lost. I owe you one, my friend.” Spoiler: He now owes Kurt approximately 240 hours of life. Repaid so far: one roast dinner and several sentences beginning with “You’re the best.”
Phase 3: The Antenna Escalation
Willi has a problem, you see. A fundamental one. Willi has no clue about technology. Not “a bit lacking.” Not “still learning.” No. Willi doesn’t know how a coaxial cable is constructed. Willi doesn’t know what SWR means. Willi once put a PL connector on backwards and wondered why “the wire looks funny.” Willi believes a balun is a French dessert.
But Willi has an impressive shack. Why? Because Kurt put up the mast. Because Berndt mounted the Yagi. Because Sepp ran the coax. Because Fritz connected the rotator. Because Manfred configured the tuner. And because Herbert — poor Herbert — spent three Saturdays lying in Willi’s attic, threading cables through cavities, while Willi stood downstairs in the kitchen making coffee.
Every single one of these OMs did it willingly. Voluntarily. Because Willi asked so nicely. Because Willi was so grateful. Because Willi said he was “technically hopeless” and whether they could “just help briefly.” Briefly. That’s Willi’s favourite word. “Just have a quick look,” “just lend a hand,” “just explain briefly.” In Willi’s vocabulary, “briefly” means between four and eleven hours.
The List: What Willi’s “Friends” Have Done for Him
Your Hansl has investigated. The following list is incomplete but illuminating:
- Kurt: Completely wired the shack, connected power supply, installed grounding (3 visits, ~16 hours)
- Berndt: Mounted 4-element Yagi, aligned rotator, soldered feed line (2 days)
- Sepp: Ran 60 metres of coaxial cable, terminated all connectors, measured SWR (1 day)
- Fritz: Programmed rotator controller, set up CAT interface, configured WSJT-X (2 visits)
- Herbert: Cable channels in the attic, drilled through walls, installed lightning protection (3 Saturdays)
- Manfred: Configured antenna tuner, aligned band filters (1 day)
- Helga: Filled out Willi’s club callsign application because Willi “can’t manage the forms”
Total estimated effort: over 200 working hours by seven different OMs. Willi’s contribution in return: coffee, cake, roast pork, and the word “thank you” in 14 different tones.
The Pattern: Why Nobody Says No
You might be wondering: Why doesn’t anyone say no? The answer is as simple as it is uncomfortable: Because Willi is a master of social indebtedness. Before he asks, he gives. Not materially — emotionally. He makes you feel special. Needed. Admired. Indispensable. And when someone makes you feel like you’re the only one who “can do this” — you don’t say no. You say: “Sure, Willi, happy to.”
And because Willi doesn’t just ask one person but everyone, nobody realises how much the others have already contributed. Kurt doesn’t know that Berndt spent two days on the mast. Berndt doesn’t know that Herbert spent three Saturdays in the attic. Everyone thinks they’re the only one “just helping briefly.” But together they’ve built Willi’s entire shack — while Willi doesn’t even know which end of a soldering iron to hold.
Willi’s Help: Show Up, Watch, Make Coffee
The insidious thing about Willi: he actually shows up when you ask for help. Always. On time. With cake. With honey. “Of course, my friend! Count me in!” You can’t fault Willi for anything. He’s there.
Only: what Willi understands by “helping” deviates considerably from the general definition. Sepp once asked Willi to help with a mast installation. Willi came. Willi stood beside it. Willi held the coffee cup. Willi said: “Amazing, Sepp, how you do that — I could never!” Willi filmed with his phone. Willi posted a photo captioned: “Mast installation with my friend Sepp — teamwork!” Sepp erected the mast alone. Willi’s contribution: moral support and a piece of cheesecake.
Same at field day: Willi volunteers. Willi shows up with a cooler full of drinks and a smile. Then Willi stands next to the tent for four hours telling everyone who walks by how great “we” built everything. Willi’s hands were never dirty. But Willi’s Facebook post shows him right in the middle — “My friend Kurt and me at field day. What a team!” Kurt assembled the antenna alone. Willi took the photos.
Eventually Herbert put it perfectly: “Willi helps like an umbrella in sunshine. He’s there, he looks nice, but he does nothing.” Herbert said this on the local frequency. Willi was also in the round. Willi’s response: “Herbert, my friend, you’re so funny! That’s why I like you so much!” Herbert turned off the microphone and opened a beer.
The Dark Secret: It’s Not About Friendship
Now we come to the core. To the uncomfortable truth your Hansl must speak, because nobody else will.
Willi doesn’t like you.
Not really. Not the way you like him. Willi needs you. That’s a difference. Willi needs your hands, your expertise, your time, your patience. And he pays for it with the cheapest currency in the world: attention and compliments.
Anyone who mistakes that for friendship is confusing the honeypot with the beehive. In the honeypot you sit sweet and sticky and can’t get out. In the beehive you work together. With Willi there’s no working together. There’s only: Willi takes, and Willi thanks. And sometimes, when Willi’s shack needs another rebuild, Willi resurfaces. Then the honey gets freshly stirred.
Your Hansl spoke with an OM who saw through Willi’s pattern early. He asked for anonymity and said only: “I helped him three times. The fourth time I said no. After that Willi never called again. Not even for my birthday. That’s when I knew: I was never his friend. I was his technician.”
The Test: Look at the Hands, Not the Mouth
If you want to know whether you have a Willi in your life, you don’t need a complicated test. A single look suffices: Look at his hands.
Are they dirty? Did he screw, solder, drill, carry? Did he sweat? Or did he stand beside you, film everything, and shout “Amazing, my friend!”? Did he hold the coax — or the coffee cup? Did he terminate the connector — or take the photo for Facebook?
The real friend has calluses. The Willi has clean fingernails, a cake plate, and always a jar of honey — whether you want it or not.
The Plug-and-Play Amateur: Calls at 9 PM
There’s a type of radio amateur the community lovingly calls “plug-and-play amateur”: plug in, power on, transmit. Everything between the power socket and the antenna jack is a black box. Willi is the perfection of this type. Willi is the plug-and-play amateur with heart. Or with honey. Or something.
And that’s why Kurt, Berndt and the others regularly get phone calls in the evening. 9 PM. Friday night. “Kurt, my friend! Sorry to bother you. Just quickly. My rig shows some weird SWR. What do I press?” Kurt explains. Ten minutes. Willi doesn’t understand. Kurt explains again. Willi presses the wrong button. Kurt drives over.
Or: “Berndt, my friend! My computer won’t connect to the radio anymore. It worked yesterday. I just briefly re-plugged something.” What Willi “briefly re-plugged” turns out to be a completely re-wired shack where not a single connector is where Berndt put it three weeks ago. Berndt drives over. Berndt rebuilds everything. Willi makes coffee.
The pattern repeats. Weekly. Sometimes daily. And at the end, when the long-suffering OM puts on his jacket to leave, comes Willi’s crowning move: he presses a twenty into your hand. “For the drive, my friend. Goes without saying.”
Twenty euros. For four hours of troubleshooting, two rebuilt cable harnesses, and a lost Friday evening. And the insidious part: you can’t even be angry. Because Willi “paid.” Because Willi was “fair.” Because Willi said “Thanks, my friend.” The twenty euros aren’t payment — they’re hush money. So you’ll pick up again next time the phone rings on Friday night.
Epilogue: Willi’s Shack Stands. His Friends Don’t.
By now, several OMs from the circle report, the mood has shifted. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But quietly, like a relay switching from transmit to receive. Kurt said last time: “Can’t do it, Willi, I’ve got plans.” Berndt didn’t call back. Sepp politely declined the cake. Herbert no longer answers when Willi’s number appears.
Willi doesn’t understand. Willi thinks the others are ungrateful. Willi thinks he always said thank you, always brought cake, always told everyone how great they are. Why are they turning away?
Because honey is no substitute for respect. Because compliments are no substitute for reciprocity. Because “You’re the best” is no substitute for actually being the best for someone else once in a while.
Willi’s shack stands. The antenna turns. The SWR is perfect. Everything works — built by hands that aren’t his. And in the evening Willi sits in front of his rig and calls CQ. And sometimes someone answers. And sometimes not. And when not, Willi wonders.
But he’ll never ask himself why.
The Moral of the Story
- Those who only take and never give will eventually lose even the last person still giving.
- Friendliness without reciprocity isn’t ham spirit — it’s marketing.
- If someone says “briefly” and means eleven hours, they’re using a different dictionary than the rest of the world.
- Honey is sweet. But too much of it makes you sick.
- And if someone calls you “my friend” before they know your surname — beware.
- The true test of friendship isn’t whether someone shows up — but whether their hands are dirty at the end of the day.
Your Hansl’s advice: Look carefully. Not everyone who smiles is your friend. Not everyone who praises you means it. And if someone stands in your shack for three hours and then says “You’re a treasure” — ask yourself: Would he do the same for you?
If yes: Hold on to them. If no: Leave the honey alone. It only sticks.
73 and stay vigilant,
your Hansl Hohlleiter
Author’s note: Any resemblance to actually existing radio amateurs who happen to be called “Honeypot” and whose shack was entirely built by others is, of course, purely coincidental. Satire can do anything — except be poorly written. If you feel addressed nonetheless: maybe just spend an hour hammering tent pegs at the next field day. With your own hands.
Transparency Notice
This article was researched and written with the assistance of AI (Claude, Anthropic). Editorial responsibility lies with the oeradio.at editorial team. All persons, events, and shack installations are entirely fictional.
