Brazil's first aviation museum

Flight Journal, Jun 1999 by Lucchesi, Claudio

Brazil lacks well-equipped aviation museums and has no tradition of preservation, but this will soon be remedied by the opening of a new, privately owned facility. Cmdr. Rolim Amaro, owner of Brazilian airline TAM, plans to establish a museum in the town of Americana. He hopes to stage daily flight displays and a large annual airshow, and some of the airplanes will be flown to other Brazilian cities on a "historic planes" tour.

The idea for the museum was sparked in the early '90s when Amaro bought a Cessna 195 for his own use. His brother, Joao Amaro, decided to restore it, and together, they conceived the idea of an aviation museum.

Since then, the brothers have hunted out planes for their collection, and today, there are more than 30 trainers and tourers. Among the rarest and most interesting are: one of the two surviving prototypes of the Paulistinha (a Brazilian-built basic trainer of the 40s); a Fleet 7 biplane (1931); two Fairchild models-a 24R and a PT-19 (both from the '40s); an Aeronca C-3 (1934); a Rearwin Sportster (1935); a Consolidated-Vultee L-13B (1949); a Boeing Stearman (1942); a Focke-Wulf Fw 44J Stieglitz (1937); a de Havilland DHC-1 Chipmunk (1949); a French-built Nord 1200 Norecrin (1949); three Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs (1954); and a rare Polish RWD 13 (1938).