Spent some more time researching Czech intelligence agencies during the cold war, hoping to get some inspiration for my Favorit bicycle design.
Turns out their is very little that’s inspiring about the Czech StB, the Czechoslovakian secret police that functioned like the East German Stasi, feverishly crushing domestic dissent, real or imagined.
The only thing that attracted me was the former Czech numbers station OLX. I have a few recordings of it from the CONET Project. It broadcast across Europe and is known as the only numbers station that has ever acknowledged a QSL card!
Anyway, I’m thinking numbers stations, instructions to agents, dead drops, bicycles, urban, agents in plain view, simplicity and it occurs to me, “why not integrate a crystal radio receiver set into my bike?” I can wrap the tuning coil (insulated) around the seat tube, in attractive shiny copper wire. Now I need to think of a fun way to mount the crystal detector package. Finally it needs attachments for ground and antenna (could the bike frame be an antenna?). I guess I need to find an antique bicycle seat bag to keep the wires and ear piece in.
Any clever ideas how to do this? It needs to be highly aesthetic and stylish.
Ooh! I just had an idea how to integrate the antenna.
The frame has small attachment points for pannier racks on the read dropouts. I can thread one of those and permanently attach an antenna aerial line. Then I can keep that wrapped up in a tidy antique leather pouch mounted to the seatstay.
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[...] spent a productive afternoon in my workshop putting together the vintage Czech bicycle that I blogged about many months ago. Since I last wrote, I had the frame and fork sandblasted and repainted, with a customized Favorit [...]
Hi, I too built a Favorit fixie. Yours is 1981 Favorit made of generic steel tubes probably with East German Renak hubs (the red skewer nut was typical for Renak). These bikes were quite heavy but lasted for ever. Most of their components were made in the same factory. They also made Favoit Special sometimes called F1 out of Reynolds tubing that was much better and quite a few people won the World Championship on it (track disciplines). I am trying to attach a picture of my fixie. Best, Petr
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