On the 21^st March 1985 it was announced that the Embraer EBM-312 Tucano had won the Ministry of Defence AST412 requirement for a replacement of the ageing Jet Provost trainer. Short Brothers PIC of Belfast would build 130 aircraft at a fixed price contract over the next 5 years. There was also an option for a further 15 aircraft.

The major changes to the original airframes were the introduction of the Garrett 1100shp Turboprop engine, giving the aircraft some 50% more power, a redesigned canopy providing for full bird-strike resistance and a requirement foe Hawk T.Mk1 compatibility. The wing structure was also completely redesigned, The wing tips were altered to withstand 2g Turns at 20000 feet in level flight and the leading edges were changed to give the pilot more stall-warning notice. The fuselage and empennage were strengthened to meet the RAF’s requirement for a 12000 hours of training. the addition of airbrakes complemented the main alterations and despite the delays caused by all these modifications Shorts were able to complete two airframes per month.

Premier’s Shorts Tucano was a model previously unknown to me, as I model almost exclusively WWII Prop driven aircraft. I originally came across this aircraft at a New Zealand version of Ebay and thought, “hell why not!” Two days later the carefully wrapped Tucano arrived at my doorstep. On examination the Premier Tucano has all the hallmarks of a short run kit with slightly “soft” detail and shallow engraved lines on wings and fuselage, a small amount of flash.

Instructions consist of a single folded sheet with exploded diagrams showing the major construction and a multi-lingual history. Paint and decal instructions are easy to follow and again multi-lingual.

Six Aircraft are depicted in the decals, all of them RAF Trainers with only the aircraft codes being different, All aircraft are painted in that lovely Red/White RAF trainer scheme.

 Just a little comment about the type of plastic is needed here, The Premire plastic is unlike any model plastic I have come across before, for some reason my usual glue of choice, Humbrol precision poly cement didn’t want to stick this baby together, No how, No way!!  The glue just “dried” without welding the plastic together, any small knock and the parts separated. I ended up switching to superglue for the remainder of the gluing. Once my fingers were separated onwards to the Construction.  

Once happy with the finish It was time to apply the decals, Premier gives you the choice of 6 different aircraft, well six different tails codes anyway, the rest of the marking are generic to the plane. After being stung a number of times lately with odd-ball decals I have got into the habit of coating "unknown" decal manufactures with clear liquid film to stop the chances of them exploding into a million pieces on contact with water. So saying that the Premier decals went down with little fuss over the gloss paint and reacted well to the wet future sandwich system that I have been using of late for decals, one of those many tips and tricks that I have gleaned from the MM discussion board.

Once the decals had dried a couple of coats of Humbrol Gloss Cote was sprayed over the model to seal in everything.

Finally the prop was painted those wacky black and white stripes and fitted to the airframe.

With that the Tucano was finished, just needing a simple base to over come the tail sitting problem. This was made out of high quality 1.5 mm card stock with the tarmac lines drawn on with a HB pencil and the edge done with one of the kids markers, the Shorts Tucano name plate was simply cut out from the side of the box.