My Spoon Rest radar

In a previous post on my East German SA-6 Gainful battery (January 2, 2015), I noted that the pack from O8 came with a Straight Flush radar vehicle, but not a Long Track radar. One other radar that was quite commonly seen accompanying the Gainful was Spoon Rest. In the SA-2 Guideline pack, there are two radars, Fan Song B and of particular interest, Spoon Rest B:

Spoon Rest B would be appropriate for the 1960s, but as my LANDJUT campaign is set in 1981, I would need Spoon Rest D:

The only appreciable difference at this scale is that the B model is based on a ZIL-157 truck, while the D model uses a URAL-375D. Spoon Rest is actually still in use and the latest model is the E. When Spoon Rest A went into service in 1956, it replaced the earlier Knife Rest B:

In order to get a Spoon Rest, I bought O8's Guideline and now I have the entire pack left over, as I have no use for the rest of it. Anybody need a slightly used SA-2 battery? In any case, here is my Spoon Rest stand:

The antenna cut-out was quite flimsy, so I took it to work and had it 5mil laminated. Now it's much sturdier. Quite a nice little addition to my combat support stands.

As an added bonus, for those of you who game Vietnam in 1/600, the North Vietnamese SA-2 sites used Fan Song A in the earlier stages of the war and upgraded to the B model when the Soviet Union made it available later. So let me show you how to convert the B model that O8's pack comes with into an A model. Here is the B as it comes in the pack:

Now, to convert it into an A model, simply remove the radar dish on the left, like this:

Can you tell that one of my areas of specialty in field intelligence (the odd couple of decades ago) was Soviet radars? 

Ok, another installment later in the weekend!