Behind the EMB-312 Tucano is Embraer's Hungarian born (19th March 1926), Ing. Joseph Kovacs. Emigrating to Brazil in 1948, he eventually, after several moves, came into his own when he became associated with Prof. Heinrich Focke (Focke-Wulf and Focke-Achgelis). In 1973, he moved to Embraer as Technical Director i/c Advanced Projects. He was involved in the design of 37 powered and unpowered aircraft - 11 of which advanced to prototype stage and another five to series production, of which the Tucano was one such.

The first Tucano to fly was PP-ZDK on 16th August 1982. Ten days later, it was being flown across the South Atlantic to make its Farnborough debut in September. The Royal Air Force selected the Tucano from 3 front runners - the Swiss Pilatus PC-9, the British hopeful was the Turbo Firecracker and the Tucano. The RAF, of course (!), was not satisfied with the Tucano "as is" and had it modified with a bigger engine, strengthened gear and other mods too, I think - and then negotiated a licence to have it built by Shorts of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The larger engine gave it a bulbous big nose look. I prefer the original - and one of these days, I'll finish my 1/4 scale model of it in the scheme of the demonstrator PP-ZDK.

From the above précis of the Argus Specialist Publication "Aircraft Described" #26, we can safely assume that the Tucano is an original Embraer design and not connected in any way with the Pilatus PC-9. As to the other names mentioned - Raytheon, Beech, Texan, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all - I leave it to another to explain these away.

Oh ! BTW, B1 Driver, I think it's a Tucano too. Well, that's a definite maybe ! I have the original Embraer catalogue with some great shots of PP-ZDK if you're interested. MalcolmL