RANS is proud to announce the first flights of the RANS S-19 occurred at 4:00 PM at the Hays Municipal Airport on 6-28-07. The flights went smooth, without any major mechanical or aerodynamic issues. We are progressing now rapidly into more advanced flight testing and have already logged over 4 hours.

As you may have guessed the plane is an instant charmer, with very smooth, light and balanced control, and good performance; it looks like we will be very close to most of our numbers. A quick cross section looks like this: rate of climb 800 FPM, cruise 120 MPH, stalls clean at 50 MPH or less. Keep in mind this is all very first blush, nothing is calibrated; the cruise speed is averaged GPS runs.
The empty weight on this particular plane is up from the projected 750 by a whooping 73 pounds. Now that sounds bad, until you realize we used ¼” thick canopy material, and that alone is 30 plus pounds. The actual standard empty weight of the SLSA will be around 775 with the 912ULS, and 870 with a 0-200.

SLSA
And speaking of SLSA; we plan to offer a certified SLSA, and are proceeding with the flight testing program with the optimistic version done in 6 months. When actual planes can roll off the production line as SLSA is not something we want to even speculate on at this time. Price will be in the 80 to 120K range.

BUILD YOUR OWN PLANE
We have begun production on the tail kits and expect to be shipping them by the end of July. Assembling this as a kit is a very viable way to save money, learn some great skills, and really know your plane. It is still a great way to get into the air, despite all the hype about the flood of ready to fly planes. Building your own plane is something I will always respect, and hope our dear FAA continues to do also.

OSHKOSH
We plan to have the plane at the show, and to have flown off the required hours (50) for R&D. That is a lot of flight testing between now and the show, so we are not making any promises at this point about offering any demo flights. Most likely the plane will appear in test form, minus paint and interior finishing’s.