Anyone every get curious about that helicopter Ross drew on the splash of Amazing Spider-Man 147? For some reason, I :censored: up this morning and decided to find out about it.
As the story unfolds, Spidey is catching a ride on a helicopter to the city from the airport. He is returning from the Florida Everglades where he has just battled the Lizard and Man-Thing in GS Spider-Man #5. The story doesn't specifically identify the airport, but upon close observation, it can be identified as JFK airport.
The helicopter is a NY Airways Sikorsky S-55, based on my quick research. NY Airways was one of a few companies in NYC where you could take a helicopter from airport to airport, or even to the top of the Pan Am building. The company went out of business in 1979 after a couple of fatal crashes.
The weird thing for me was the floatation devices that Ross drew on the bottom of the aircraft. As I have come to find out after about three years of studying Ross's work, if he drew it, it was real. The flotation bags were required for flight over water with a single-engined helicopter. I'm not sure I would have trusted them though.
Ross does a great job on the helicopter. I feel Ross drew a better plane or helicopter, than he did cars. Ross drew one giant floatation device on the very bottom, but it looks like it was actually split. The only other nit was Ross had the arrow in the Sky Bus logo the wrong direction, but hell that is really nitpicking on my part.