VH-BIB (4) Beech 65-A90 King
Air
(c/n LJ-227)
A popular
registration is VH-BIB. After the first allocation, which was a
Lockheed Hudson (no
photo has come to
light), the next three were Beech products. The
current (the 6th
or 7th) is a
Piper
Arrow III.
Anyway this, the fourth, was seen (above) at Mascot on a
hot day in February
1968 by Greg
Banfield. Greg's second shot, immediately below was at
Bankstown in October of
1974 while the King Air was owned by
Delta Air Services Pty Ltd. In an almost
identical pose,
Geoff
Goodall's photo at the foot of the page was taken slightly before
Greg's photo above in April
1967 in
front of the control tower at
Adelaide's Parafield Airport .
At that time it was actually
registered to
B.S.Stillwell Pty Ltd of Melbourne,
which was founded by racing car driver Bib
Still-
well who had
taken over Civil Flying Services at Moorabbin from Brookes
Aviation in 1962. At
the time of Geoff's photo it was Stillwell's personal aircraft although
clearly was released into the
general CFS
fleet by 1968. Formerly N5401U, it returned
to the US in 1975 as N239K, although
ended its days in
Chile as CC-PIR.