RANS S-20 Raven

The S-20 Raven is a side-by-side, high-wing, fabric-and-steel-tube two-seater that can be built as either a taildragger or a tricycle — and that last part is rare enough to be the reason to look at it. RANS calls the gear "Fixed, Convertible / Taildragger or Trike", so one airframe covers both, with a 75-inch propeller on the tailwheel version and 70 inches on the trike.

It is RANS's answer to the question the S-7 Courier could not: the same back-country airplane, but with the passenger beside you instead of behind you. The cockpit is 46.5 inches wide against the Courier's 30, and that single dimension is most of the buying decision between the two.

On the numbers it is a modest airplane and an honest one. 96 KTAS on 5.0 gph, 900 fpm of climb, a 300-foot takeoff roll, a 34-knot clean stall, and 588 lb of useful load on a 732 lb empty weight. The 300-foot roll and the 29-knot flaps-down stall are what the mission scores are built on: this is a short-field airplane that happens to cruise adequately, not a tourer that happens to land short.

Why this page exists separately. Until 2026-10-12 the S-20 shared a page with the S-6, S-7, S-19 and S-21 under the name "RANS S-Series", with a price band spanning 7.0x — the most over-lumped page in the catalog. The S-19 on that page is a low-wing aluminium airplane and the page's frontmatter read wing_position: high, so the data was wrong for at least one of the five however you read it. See docs/LSA-CATEGORY-GAP.md.

The S-20 is one airframe with gear and engine choices rather than a series of models. The S-6 below is its discontinued predecessor and is recorded here because this is its closest surviving relative — same fabric-over-steel-tube construction, same high wing, same side-by-side seating.

Siblings on their own pages now: rans-s7-courier (tandem, same construction), rans-s19-venterra (low wing, aluminium, fast) and rans-s21-outbound (all metal, 180 hp, 1,800 lb in experimental form).

The 915iS and 916iS install kits are the thing to ask RANS about. Both are advertised on the product page and neither appears on the spec sheet, so nothing published says what a turbocharged S-20 does. On the S-21, going from 100-ish to 160 hp bought 4,000 ft of service ceiling and about 40 mph of Vne, so the difference is likely substantial — but that is another airframe and this page will not put a number on it.

Every figure comes from one spec sheet dated 10/6/2020, and it holds together better than most sources in this catalog. Three independent checks pass:

• 732 lb empty + 588 lb useful = 1,320 lb gross, exactly.
• 26 gal ÷ 5.0 gph = 5.2 hours, which is the published endurance exactly.
• 5.2 hours × 95.6 kt = 497 nm, and the published 572 statute miles converts to 497 nm. The cruise, the burn, the endurance and the range are one self-consistent set.

That is worth saying because it is unusual. Most light-sport sources in this catalog give a brochure cruise next to a long-range fuel flow.

RANS publishes everything in mph and statute miles, and this page stores knots and nautical miles. Every converted figure is declared in the derived: block with its arithmetic. The conversions matter: the sheet's "572 miles" is 497 nm, and storing 572 would have overstated range by 15% — the exact trap the research protocol names, and the one that was live on the Flight Design CT page until yesterday.

Two figures are deliberately absent. The sheet gives takeoff and landing ground rolls and no over-50-foot obstacle distances. Those are not estimated: the obstacle figure runs 1.4–2.2× the ground roll and guessing it is how a Cirrus page ended up with a Skyhawk's landing distance. And there is no best-glide speed — the sheet gives a glide ratio of 8.5:1, which is a different kind of number and is recorded here rather than in a speed field.

The 8.5:1 glide is worth a sentence on its own. It is a draggy airplane, and deliberately so: struts, fabric, big tires and a 30-foot wing on 152.7 square feet. From 3,000 feet AGL that is a little over four nautical miles of glide. The S-19 Venterra on the same engine manages 12:1.

588 lb of useful load, 156 lb of fuel if you fill it:

This is the rare light two-seater that is not payload-limited. Two adults, the full 80 lb baggage allowance and full fuel all fit inside 1,320 lb at once — which the Bristell RG (472 lb useful), the Vashon Ranger (445 lb) and the S-19 Venterra (500 lb) cannot do. The 732 lb empty weight is doing that work, and it is the quiet advantage of fabric over steel tube.

The constraint is the tank, not the scales: 26 gallons at 5.0 gph is 5.2 hours, and with a sensible reserve a 4-hour leg at 96 knots is about 380 nm.

Back-country is an 8 and local flying a 9, which is what this airplane is for. A 300-foot takeoff roll, a 340-foot landing roll, a 29-knot stall with flaps out, convertible tailwheel gear and 21.2 cubic feet of baggage space behind the seats. Fabric over steel tube is also the easiest structure in this catalog to repair in a field, which matters more than it sounds for an airplane flown onto unimproved strips.

Training is a 6 rather than higher. It is docile and cheap to run, but a tailwheel S-20 needs an endorsement before a student can solo it, and the convertible gear means a school has to decide which configuration it is teaching in. The trike build is a genuinely good primary trainer; the taildragger is a good second airplane for a school.

Cross-country is a 5. 96 knots and 5.2 hours is 497 nm of still-air range, which is real capability — but at 96 knots a 400 nm leg is over four hours, and this is an airplane with a 46-inch cabin and no autopilot as standard. It will do it. Nobody enjoys doing it often.

Business travel is a 2 and aerobatics a 1. No IFR capability, +4/−2 g limits, and spins are not a manoeuvre this airframe is approved for.

Parts: good. Mechanics: specialist. RANS has been in Hays, Kansas since the 1980s, sells parts directly, publishes assembly manuals, pre-flight inspection sheets and a tool list for every model, and runs a builder-support line. For a kit manufacturer that is about as good as the category offers.

The airframe is the easy part. Welded 4130 steel tube fuselage and tail, tubular aluminium wing structure with stamped aluminium ribs, fabric covering, cable-operated rudder and ailerons. Any shop that can work on a Cub can work on this, and a builder who assembled it can usually repair it.

The engine is where "specialist" comes from. A Rotax 912 ULS is a geared, liquid-cooled, 5,800-rpm engine that rewards Rotax-specific training. TBO is 2,000 hours and the overhaul figure of $14,000 comes from reference/engine-overhaul-pricing.md, which rates it confidence A — anchored on published AVweb and KITPLANES quotes rather than estimated, so the reserve of $7.00/hr on this page is better founded than most in the catalog.

Rotax's calendar limits bite a low-utilisation owner. The rubber-replacement interval on hoses and the gearbox is driven by years as well as hours, and an airplane flying 60 hours a year will hit calendar limits with a third of its TBO unused.

One prebuy item specific to this airframe: if it has been converted between taildragger and tricycle gear, get the paperwork and the parts provenance for that conversion. The convertibility is a feature, and a conversion done badly is a structural question rather than a cosmetic one.

No used-market figures are stored on this page, and the reason is worth stating rather than hiding: the old combined page carried a $25,000–$175,000 range that covered five different airplanes, and none of it is transferable to one of them. The finder will show this model without pricing rather than score it on a number built from the S-21's prices.

What drives an S-20's value, in rough order: who built it and how well, engine time against both TBO and calendar, fabric age, whether the panel is a basic VFR set or a Garmin/Dynon glass install, and which gear it is on. A well-built taildragger with low engine time and a modern panel sits at a very different price from an early kit build with a timed-out 912.

RANS publishes a current KIT PRICING SHEET per model, which is the right anchor for a new build and is a follow-up for this page.

An amateur-built S-20 holds an experimental airworthiness certificate, and the FAA issues no airworthiness directives against experimental aircraft. An S-LSA S-20 is governed by RANS's own safety directives and service bulletins, which an owner is required to comply with to keep the airplane airworthy — a stricter arrangement than it sounds, because the manufacturer can mandate work with no FAA process in between.

RANS publishes a DIRECTIVES page on its own site. Get the full compliance record for the specific airframe at prebuy and check it against that list rather than the seller's summary.

On any amateur-built airplane the builder is the biggest variable, and more so than the model. The spec sheet's weights are marked "approximately" by RANS itself; a specific airframe's empty weight is a property of who built it and what they put in it. Weigh it. A heavy build can take 50–80 lb off that 588 lb useful load without anything being wrong.

Ask for: the builder's log, the weight and balance with its date, the engine's total time and the dates of its last rubber replacement, fabric condition and when it was last recovered, and — on a taildragger — the logs read specifically for groundloop repair.

$2,000 is extrapolated from the light-sport band in reference/insurance-costs.md, not quoted. No RANS binder is on file.

Three things move it: tailwheel or trike, which is the single biggest factor and can be most of the premium on a low-time pilot; amateur-built versus S-LSA, since underwriters price an experimental airframe differently and some decline them outright for a pilot with no time in type; and hull value, which on a kit airplane is whatever the build and the panel came to rather than a book figure.

Get a quote through an agency that writes experimental aircraft specifically, and expect a tailwheel checkout and dual-in-type minimums to be conditions rather than suggestions.