Warbirds in miniature

Flying Legend was set up in 2011 at Caltagirone, in the hills of eastern Sicily, as a joint venture between two Italian light-aircraft firms, MGA and Barum. Its business is nostalgia with modern engineering underneath: scale replicas of famous military aircraft, built in aluminium and powered by light-aircraft engines, sold as kits or ready to fly. Its first two products, both flown in 2011, were a replica of the Hawker Hurricane and a replica of the Embraer EMB 312 Tucano.

The Tucano that became a Tucano

The Tucano Replica was introduced at the AERO show at Friedrichshafen in 2011. It reproduces the 1980s Brazilian turboprop trainer in reduced scale, with tandem seats under a bubble canopy, an airframe of 2024-T3 and 6061-T6 aluminium and a wingspan of 8.41 metres. Instead of a turboprop it uses Rotax engines, the 100 hp 912ULS as standard with options up to the 141 hp Rotax 915, and the retractable undercarriage can be swapped for a fixed one.

A replica in uniform

The twist came in 2023, when the replica crossed back into the world it imitated. The Dominican Republic acquired an experimental military variant, designated TP-75 Dulus, giving a kit-plane manufacturer from Sicily a place in an air force order of battle. For the civil market the Tucano Replica is still offered both as a homebuilt kit and as a ready-to-fly aircraft, with a fixed-undercarriage variant for American buyers, and the Hurricane Replica continues alongside it. For a kit-plane maker, an air force designation is an unusual distinction.

Fabrikalar

• Caltagirone works · Caltagirone, Sicily — Design and production