The Brasilia is a great airplane - well designed, fast, economical and state of the art in the '80s.... Flew it for about 3500 hours - the only whining I can do is that it's a turboprop, which makes it noisy enough so that you need to wear headsets ("David Clark head clamps"
) most of the day when flying it... Reckon the EMB-145 Jungle Jet has a more hospitable environment
My flight in the Tucano was a riot - Flew about an hour with a factory test pilot, including aerobatics, simulated strafing runs and traffic patterns... Before flight, I had to be fitted for a flight suit and parachute. The largest sizes they had were bright orange and about three sizes too small, requiring me to walk around hunched over to keep from talking in soprano - not exactly the TopGun image I had hoped to project as I strode confidently to the flight line
Also had to get checked out on the use of the ejection seat - I spoke no Portugese, and the seat trainer/tech spoke no English, so the sales rep translated between us for the forty minutes it took to do the briefing. Fortunately, I didn't need to punch out on the flight, but thinking back on it, I wonder if all I needed to know had been correctly translated....
Flying the airplane kinda reminded me of a Bonanza on steroids... Very responsive handling, tremendous visibliity and power up the wazoo..
Cheers!
Jim