SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:16 am Post subject: Killer Bee's

File this under "another cool paint job and great idea that nothing will be done with". But I wanted to do a helicopter ever since discovering chrome, and I loved the Killer Bee's Tours in San Francisco, so, well there ya go.

http://home.earthlink.net/~calxpress/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/killerb.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~calxpress/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/kilrb.jpg

There's I think four or five sightseeing tours that use the Hughes 500 series over the bay, and I can remember the Killer Bee's because of the paint schemes. I think they folded in the late 1980's after a crash off Point Reyes...stuff happens.

http://home.earthlink.net/~calxpress/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/n500kb.jpg

Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject:

¡Muy fenomenal! (is that how it's spelled?)

Seriously...amazing

Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject:

That's a Hughes 500C, the Bee's used a C and two E's in their operations. The crash happened on January 11, 1990 when the aircraft flew into the side of the hills north of the bridge about a mile east of the old lighthouse at Point Reyes. No passengers were aboard and only ther pilot was killed. The FAA grounded all sightseeing for 6 months, and that eliminated about half of them from reopening. For some reason I remembered it differently, I though that two passengers were killed but evidently not.

This was done from memory but I do remember the front being natural metal. My source in SF and I debated the number of stripes and until she can produce me a photo, I'm saying it had seven. Cool

She says it had 9 but we both agree the first and last were yellow. Another thing we agreed on was the aft skid support being half yellow and half black. I thought that was weird, they should have just made that yellow band a few inches wider. It shared the sort of theme that Island Hoppers in Hawaii does, and it was pretty popular with the Magnum PI crowd.