Radar Love or How I Lost It In The Compost!

Most of my SWORD collection was acquired from a single vintage toy dealer, the diligent Chris Avis, in the mid 1990's. Chris found me my boxed Scout 1 pictured above. Back then there was no internet or any medium for talking about SWORD, so it was easy to bumble along in blissful ignorance. For years I thought I had an unusual but correct radar on my Scout 1, the white disk you can see above. It was years later when I first saw the specification sheet pictured below, which confirmed what the box art had tried to tell me all those years ago, that the Scout 1 radar/ antenna is a black net rectangle a bit like a small fly swatter!

 

Armed with this knowledge I began to search for what turned out to be a very rare radar. The nearest I could come up with was the black antenna found on the Firefly XYZ Mark III made by Jimson [below: top - mint example, Ebay, bottom - my own toy].

So it was with utter astonishment that one day in 2011 I received a small packet from my very good friend and fellow blogger Mister Wotanicus Wotan, which contained...yes, a Scout 1 radar! I was staggered!

I immediately compared it to the Jimson Firefly antenna sitting on my rather damaged example, which made it clear that they weren't that similar after all. Not needing the Jimson and to return the spirit of the favour I gave my Jimson radar to my good friend Ferryman, whom I knew was desperately looking for one and I gave Wotan a kiss when I saw him next!

Returning to the kitchen after taking the above picture I went to savour my new and authentic C21 radar. But it had gone! I searched everywhere but to no avail! the radar was below the radar! I was frantic! I rang my Wife, I checked the washing machine, I searched the sink and swept the floor. Nothing! Oh my God, I hadn't even had the radar 24 hours and I'd lost it. Feeling revitalised after some strong Yorkshire tea I set about retracing my steps in a full-scale CSI reconstruction. Step by step my movements revealed themselves and I found myself staring at the small compost bin we have in the kitchen, which we empty each day onto the big heap in the garden. And no, that's not my Missus but the timber composting 'box' you can see at the rear of this photograph! Yikes! A second later I was rummaging through old carrot peelings, tea bags and wilted salad searching for the lost radar like a Yorkshire terrier! Tentatively the little radar revealed itself in the pile and I danced around the garden like mad man! There is a God after all!

Without further ado I brushed off the last millipede and placed the radar in its natural home, on top of the Scout 1 where it will stay. Enjoy their hard-earned reunion, which I caught on camera. Now just missing the missile! Think I'll go and look in the compost!