There are radio amateurs who listen. And then there is Reinhold Reflexxer, OE0FLX. Reinhold doesn’t listen — Reinhold waits. He waits for the moment someone proudly mentions their new rig. Because then, and only then, a reflex stirs in Reinhold, faster than any VOX circuit: “That’s a good radio,” he says gently. Pause. “But the more expensive one is better, of course.”
On principle, Reinhold owns the more expensive one. No matter what’s being discussed — transceiver, amplifier, antenna tuner, coax cable, connectors, microphone, the knob on the microphone, the screw that holds the knob. Whatever Reinhold has is better. It isn’t just better, it was also more expensive, and to him those are one and the same thing.
“That’s good — but the pricier one is better”
The reflex works on every net, in every register, on every topic. When an OM enthusiastically describes his new 600-euro entry-level TRX, Reinhold nods approvingly — “solid choice, really” — and then slips in that he himself runs the flagship with the full-colour spectrum display, “but that’s a different league, you can’t compare them.” With which he has opened the conversation nobody wanted.
If someone reports a cheap RTL-SDR stick they’re using to decode weather sondes, Reinhold praises the dedication — and then explains why his four-figure SDR receiver “plays in a completely different world.” That a 30-euro stick gets you surprisingly far is something Reinhold has never actually tried. He knows in advance, after all, that the more expensive one is better.
The Priciest Shack for Miles Around
Reinhold’s shack is a museum of the upper price bracket. The flagship rig, the big amplifier, the external tuner that wouldn’t actually be needed because the flagship has one built in — but the external one is more expensive, hence better. The headphones cost more than some OMs spent on their entire first station. The microphone is a studio model. It hangs in a shock mount. With a pop filter.
In photos the shack looks like a sales brochure. Everything glows, everything is new, nothing has a scratch. There’s a simple reason for that: it’s barely used. A radio you actually operate picks up signs of wear. Reinhold’s gear is flawless.
Overdriven Like a Market Crier
When Reinhold does finally transmit, the whole frequency knows about it. Not because his signals are particularly clean — quite the opposite. Reinhold is overdriven. Always. His studio microphone, his flagship, his amplifier: a line-up that ought to dazzle on paper — and that ends up sounding like a megaphone in a tin garage.
The ALC sits permanently in the red. The speech processor is maxed out. The mic gain to match. “So they can hear me properly,” says Reinhold. People can indeed hear him properly — three channels over as well, in fact. Anyone who gently points it out gets the reply: “With gear in this price range that simply can’t happen.”
Fine-Tuning? Sounds Like Effort
Reinhold’s real secret is that he hasn’t the faintest idea about fine-tuning. None. The manual for his flagship is still original in its shrink wrap. Terms like ALC threshold, compression ratio, audio bandwidth, pre-distortion, or simply “turn the mic gain down” trigger the same reaction in him as a tax return: he’d happily leave that to someone who knows what they’re doing. He just never calls that someone.
That’s the fine irony about Reinhold: he owns the very gear that could produce a truly excellent, clean signal — and runs it like a PMR radio from the hardware-store twin pack. The most expensive kit in the area, operated with all the care of a light switch. A real specialist.
Heard Only on the 2 m Repeater
And here, finally, it goes very quiet around the loudest man in the club. Because Reinhold is really only heard in one single place: on the local 2 m repeater. On precisely the repeater you can key up from the kitchen table with the cheapest Chinese handheld — and with a month’s salary of flagship just as well. On a repeater it isn’t the price bracket that decides, it’s the machine.
On the QRGs where rig, antenna and above all skill really matter — weak signals on HF, simplex over long distance, a cleanly tuned SSB QSO at the band edge — you never hear Reinhold. Where the more expensive radio could actually make a difference, it sits silent and flawless on the shelf. Reinhold shares the repeater, by the way, with some old acquaintances: the Relay Troll lives right next door, after all.
Astronaut and Tower Pro — at least in his own mind
Reinhold sees himself operating in higher spheres anyway — quite literally. Privately, he counts himself among the space communicators. The one time he heard the ISS on 2 m — through the repeater, of course, with a handheld — that was, for him, practically a spacewalk. Ever since, he talks about “us satellite folks” and loves to explain orbital mechanics, which he consistently gets wrong. The most expensive Az/El rotator setup for satellite work is firmly in the plan. As usual, it never gets ordered.
And then there’s the tower pro. Reinhold is the local club’s antenna-mast expert — in theory. He advises everyone on structural loads, guying, fall protection and the “one and only correct” mast, and knows every catalogue by heart. His own antenna is a stubby vertical clamped to the balcony railing. Reinhold has never once climbed a tower; the one time something actually had to be mounted, he hired a firm “for safety reasons” — and supervised the whole thing from the ground, coffee in hand, like an air-traffic controller in the tower.
The Monthly Family Album
Reinhold’s second stage is social media. And there he follows a dependable rhythm. Whenever others report on their activities — a SOTA activation, a successful fieldday, a rare DX in the log — at least once a month Reinhold’s hour strikes.
That’s when he posts his family album. Yellowed photos, a radio from another epoch, himself with considerably more hair. “That was back then, twenty years ago, when we still did proper radio.” There follows a rundown of everything he once did x years ago — at length, preferably, and preferably under the post of someone who has just proudly described their first home-built dipole. Reinhold doesn’t congratulate. Reinhold reminds.
The lovely thing about old stories is that they get better with every telling. Just like the more expensive one. And so the circle closes: whatever Reinhold doesn’t get on the air today, he worked all the more impressively back then — and his rig of the day was, with all due modesty, naturally the better one.
One day, that much is certain, Reinhold will really push his expensive gear to the limit. Cleanly tuned, properly levelled, out there on the demanding QRGs. Maybe next spring. Until then he’s easy to hear — on the repeater, three channels wide, and once a month in the comments section.
73 de Hansl Hohlleiter
Transparency Notice
This satire was written with AI assistance (Claude, Anthropic). Any illustrations used were generated with AI (ChatGPT/DALL·E, OpenAI) unless otherwise noted. All characters and callsigns are fictional. Any resemblance to living or deceased radio amateurs would be purely coincidental — and probably cause for self-reflection. Comments and complaints by email to [email protected].
