Originally Posted by
Dan Winterland
The Firecracker turbo was demonstrated to the RAAF at Fairoaks in about '86 and easily operated off its 813m runway; wonder if the Tucano could do that.
Des Norman came up the tower and I chatted to him (very nice guy) and he told me the Shorts Tucano had to be re-engined from the original Embraer version (which necessitated something of a re-design) as it otherwise could not meet the RAF requirement of 250 kt ias at low level.
I owned a Monnet Moni at the time which, as with the Firecracker, had a ventral airbrake and we discovered the nose up pitch change on extending the airbrake was common to both types!