It’s been too long since I reviewed a bushflyer! That’s going to be changing this spring as I take a look at a few different products that have come out for this style of flying. One of the first on my list is FlyBoy Simulations RANS S-6S for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. This aircraft originally came out for MSFS 2020 back in 2023 and has seen an update to make it a native 2024 aircraft. How is it? Is it a good back country flyer? Let’s take a look!

A bit of history

So many short aircraft histories I write involve company’s that have a dream about aviation. RANS or Rans Designs or Rans Inc. started in a very different place producing land yachts (think tricycle with a sail attached like a boat). After trying out hangliding, founder Randy Schlitter considered designing an Ultralight and produced the S-4 Coyote. The company went on to produce over twenty different light sport aircraft.

The S-6 was an evolution of the single seat S-4 and S-5 Coyote offerings. The S-6 Coyote II was designed as a two-seater with the seats setup next to each other. The type first flew in 1988 and 2,100 were built over the course of production so far. There are several variants and FlyBoy Simulations elected to build the 100 horsepower S-6S “Super Six” which is an improved version. All variants of the S-6 have proved popular not only in North America but also in Western Europe.

Included in the product

FlyBoy Simulations has included four distinct variants of the RANS S-6S aircraft in their MSFS 2024 release.

1. There’s the standard tricycle gear variant
2. A tricycle gear with bush wheels variant
3. A tail dragger variant (also fitted with bushwheels)
4. An amphibious variant too!

The pontoon fitted amphibian has also retractable wheels for runway operations and a rudder so you have some degree of control on the water.

I have to say that the bushwheel equipped taildragger is easily my favourite to fly but I can see people gravitating to the tricycle gear option (in either wheel configuration) if you’re a little more used to that style of gear.

The aircraft features the usual array of high resolution textures, detailed modeling, support for MSFS 2024’s walk-around mode, an engine damage system (with oil, coolant & fuel management), a flip-pad that lets you set some custom details on the aircraft and monitor the state of the airplane, and 14 liveries. It’s a good selection

Visuals and sounds

FlyBoy Simulations have done an overall good job with the RANS S-6S.

There are a few places where the texturing feels a little flat, particularly in the cockpit which is mostly just a blue/grey wash and if you look really hard there are a few places there are a few details that could be a bit better or written lettering could have been done with vectors rather than pixels. Not perfect but there’s also a lot to like too!

On the other side of the coin, the aircraft is generally modeled beautifully, most of the textures are otherwise excellent, the animations are smooth and it all comes together with a solid impression.

It’s not the very top tier but it is still very good and it looks good in screenshots. You forget about any niggles too as the rest of the product is so well put together.

The aircraft also has some great extra features visually. The interactive components are also quite well done overall with the ability to open two of the maintenance hatches on the engine. There are a few issues with clickspots on the oil dipstick specifically but everything else I was quite happy with. Its fun to be able to open the panels and check out how things are looking.

There are some neat bonus features too. If you choose to eschew the fancy electronics, there’s a storage compartment up front which, when opened, reveals a folding map, a couple of booklets, and a few other doodads stored in there.

The aircraft also benefits from the visual dirt system so tires and airframe get dirty over time and use. Do a bunch of back country landings and you’ll see the grime starting to build up pretty quickly! I love that feature.

I did do a bit of water skimming to see if any custom effects had been added there (like many of the Got Friends aircraft that I fly) and sadly no it doesn’t seem to have that kind of effect. There is a particle dust effect that kicks up on both water and ground but otherwise nothing.

The aircraft comes with 14 liveries as previously mentioned. You have quite a lot of options to choose from and a few have logos on them representing a specific aircraft or operator. Most of them are generic enough that you can make it your own. Nice!

On the sound front, there’s less to do with a plane like this than say a large airliner. I do think the engine sounds are good and the engine sounds when damaged are really quite impressively good. There’s audio effects for wind screen noise, creaking airframe, gear on touchdown, the flaps, and the few buttons that the aircraft has. If you break the engine, the sound effects there are great and convey exactly what is going wrong. If you starve the engine, it will similarly do some really impressive effects.

Systems

Planes like this don’t have extensive feature lists, however, this one does have a good selection of capabilities.

The aircraft has an analogue cockpit but it has the ability to make use of the Garmin Aera touchscreen navigation system. It’s good enough for an aircraft of this capability and the touchscreen makes it very easy to use in MSFS. You can remove that from the cockpit and go fully analogue too without the GPS assist.

There is a basic autopilot system modeled with the ability to do nav following as well as heading and altitude holds. I think this is perfect as I do like to do longer cross country flights in bushplanes and so being able to get up from the sim and walk away for a moment is ideal. Or even just the fatigue of not needing to be at the controls. Great to see, a smart add, and something that adds to the capabilities.

The electrical system is modeled and mapped out so you can pull a circuit breaker and a system will shut down. Put it back in again and you’re back in business.

I was surprised to find out that the aircraft has a little flip out pad setup that gives you some extra options for branded logo placement, registration code placement (tail, fuselage or wing), and the ability to control a limited amount of maintenance items. The thing that really won me over with this aircraft was when I overdid it on the engine for a prolonged period of time and the engine health started to degrade.

Overdo the engine too long and the oil pressure will fluctuate, the engine will drop RPM, run rough, and ultimately quit. You can track it on the pad with a percentage of engine health. Its an option but I love that it is here as it makes you fly a bit smarter knowing you can damage the plane.

To fix it, you have to do a bit of work on the flip-card. A lot of developers offer a “fix” button or or a restock button for oil. Here you need to make sure you’re on the ground with the engine off, turn the realism switch to off for 5 seconds, then back on. Damage is reset at that point. Not the most intuitive but it does work.

Flying it

Above everything else with this aircraft, the thing that won me over with this aircraft is the flight model. FlyBoy Simulations say that they ran the aircraft through tests with real world pilots for the aircraft, though nearly every other aircraft release I’ve read has said similar things. But I do think they got the flying character here really nicely handled as the aircraft sways, shakes, moves realistically, fights you at times, while otherwise generally handling well. I don’t know how much of this is the developer’s work and how much of this is MSFS 2024’s better model overall but the overall effect feels good. Still not X-Plane level of liveliness but getting there.

The aircraft does have a very generous stall which is to say that it doesn’t really like to stall but rather washes out and just flops nose forward ever so gently. Its difficult to spin but I did get a small bit of spin out of it. This may be the nature of the aircraft and many high winged aircraft tend to behave like this… but MSFS 2024 may be a bit too generous. Otherwise, its really good and tons of fun to fly! The nose does like to wander a bit, especially in asymmetric yaw and especially with the centre of gravity a little rearward, so you’ll want to keep a close eye on that when you’re flying slow and doing back country landings.

With just 100 horsepower on tap, this is not the most powerful bushplane. It can get up and off the ground quickly, but you do still have to work with it a bit to get altitude. That’s lead to a fair hairy moments where I thought I wasn’t going to clear the trees ahead of me. On the other hand, this is a sim, so that makes for more entertaining flying!

It’s not a fast airplane either topping out around 100 mph before you start to get into the yellow. Like a lot of other bushplanes it isn’t about going fast but landing slowly and thanks to the generous tall character and quick action flaps, you can get this down into some fun places.

It also has really good handling on water with a water rudder and pontoons. The physics here are enjoyable and its fun to just land it and sit on the water.

Final thoughts

FlyBoy Simulations did a solid job with this aircraft! There are a few visuals that maybe could be tightened up just a bit to give it that extra bit of polish, however, where it matters the RANS S-6S flies great, has some impressive system depth for the price, and its a fun addition to any bushplane collection.

I bought this aircraft on a bit of a whim. I had heard a few good things out there from other reviewers but I hadn’t really looked into it recently and decided I needed a new bushplane. Checking out an indie developer and seeing what they are capable of can sometimes go badly but I’m pleased to report that it didn’t here.

You can pick up the FlyBoy Rans S-6S Coyote II natively for MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 in the marketplace or on Orbx’s Store or over at iniBuilds. It’s just $10-12 USD depending on the storefront and well worth the money!

Screenshots