I've just spent a couple of hours trying out the last of the amphibious planes that I had not tested out previously: the Pilatus PC-6 on floats. I've now spent at least 1 hour flying all of the amphibious planes that come with MSFS, and one that I downloaded from a third-party site. There's the Zlin Shock Ultra, the DHC-2 Beaver, the Cessna 172, the Pilatus PC6/Turbo-Porter G950, the Icon A5, the Hughes H4, the Grumman G21A Goose (Asobo), the CubCrafter X-Cub, and the one I downloaded from Flightsim.to: OzWookiee's Grumman Goose G21A Redux II. This is a high-quality port of the Goose from FSX. The exterior textures have that "fuzzy" quality so common to FSX imports (for example, rivets and other small details), but most of the instrument gauges look quite sharp. The main differences between the G21 Redux-II and the stock Asobo G21, are that the Redux aircraft has 3-blade props, and the floats retract to become the wingtips - this gives the aircraft about a 30-knot sped advantage at normal cruise power settings. The Redux-II is stated to be modelled more-or-less on a 1943 US Navy JRF-5, of which 184 were built. A search of the Internet shows that at least 1 airframe very similar to the Redux-II Goose, was still flying sometime in the 1970's, out of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. A bunch of photos of it can be seen here: https://www.net-maquettes.com/pictures/grumman-g-21-goose/#bwg979/71351
This airframe has the 3-blade props and the retractable wing floats. In my opinion, it's more fun to fly than the Asobo Goose: the engine sound file is way better than Asobo's, and the flight performance seems better, although both are supposed to have the 450 hp engine. Apparently, a few G21's were produced, or later modified, that had the "SC-G" variant of the R-985 Wasp Junior engine, that could produce 525 hp for climb, and 600 hp for up to 4 minutes for takeoff. I modified the config file to simulate this engine, and the plane felt overpowered and "unrealistic", so I dropped it back to the stock 450 hp.

One of the problems with the float planes, is that as far as I can tell, none of them have fully functional animation of the landing gear and water rudder. Some of them are rendered with the landing gear "up", and others with it "down". On one of them, the DHC-2 Beaver, hitting CTRL-W when you have an exterior view, does show the water rudder going up and down. Where this is a problem, is that if you use Exterior views while setting up to land, it's confusing to see the landing gear "down" when you are getting ready to land on water, or "up" on a normal runway approach. Clicking the "G" key or your joystick button that's been set to toggle the landing gear, isn't going to help - you won't see the gear move, forcing you to pop back into the cockpit to check on the gear condition switch, lever, or annunciator. I wish Asobo would fix this.

So which is the best amphibian? There are two general categories: the small, 4 cylinder planes like the CubCrafter, Zlin Shock Ultra, Icon A5, and the Cessna 172, and the heavier-lift planes like the Pilatus PC-6 and the Goose. If you like to be as realistic as possible, and pretend that this sim is the real world, and you would personally have to pay for the fuel, the Pilatus has by far the highest fuel consumption, 48 gallons per hour at 108 knots at 5,000 feet. You can bring this down a bit by flying up near the service ceiling, but if this was the "real world", everyone on the plane would have to be on oxygen, and somehow, I kind of doubt that float planes ever fly at 24,000 feet. At that altitude, the engine would be burning maybe 36 gallons per hour, and the ground speed would be 190 knots. The Goose Redux-II burns less fuel, it's 40 knots faster than the PC-6 at normal cruise power and neutral elevator trim, and all of the landing gear and wingtip/float animations work. And it's got much larger fuel tanks than the Pilatus, and about double the range. Just be careful when landing on a runway, to slow way down before making turns: the landing gear track is very narrow, and the plane will tip over and damage your wing if you whizz through taxi turns going faster than about 15 mph. Also, the Goose is a tail dragger, so be gentle on the brakes when coming to a stop so you don't slam the nose into the ground. One other difference between the Redux-II and the Asobo versions of the Goose: The Asobo plane has a user-selectable lock/unlock switch for the tailwheel caster. The Redux-II doesn't have this, but it behaves as if the caster is locked. The Asobo Goose is twitchy and very easy to ground-loop, whereas the Redux-II Goose doesn't have any noticeable tendency to ground-loop, yet it still steers with the rudder pedals like any plane with a steerable rear wheel. This isn't actually accurate, because the "real" Goose, all versions, had a castering tailwheel, and you had to steer it on the ground with either the engines, or differential braking.

For the small amphibians, I like the X-Cub best, It's easy to fly, and has a very nice glass cockpit. The C-172 with the G-1000 cockpit is also a good choice; it's a little faster than the X-cub, and it has seats for 4, but 25% higher fuel consumption. The Zlin Shock Ultra has crazy-low STOL capabilities, even on floats. With half-flaps set, and 25% up-trim, it will lift off the water at 30 knots and actually fly, if you are careful to not stall it. You could fly the Zlin onto and off of really small lakes that none of the other amphibs could possibly operate from, but there's no glass cockpit, no autopilot, the fuel tank is very small, and the Zlin is the slowest of all of the amphibs, with a VNE of only 99 kts (114 mph). It's fun to fly around a small area and practice STOL maneuvers, but be very mindful of your speed - the Zlin will break up in flight if you pass that VNE by more than a couple of percent, and it's easy to do in the float plane version if you pull off the power too abruptly without sufficient nose-up trim. The drag of the floats will yank the nose down, and the plane will accelerate past the VNE before you can react to correct the problem. All of the float planes need a lot of up elevator trim, but the Zlin has the lowest VNE and is the easiest to destroy by overstressing it with too much speed in a dive.

Edited July 23, 20241 yr by lgcharlot
corrected a couple of spelling and grammer errors.

I don't have any amphibs any more (you forgot the Kodiak which was the last amphib I uninstalled). The amphib Rans S6S is launching in the next few weeks and I'm very much looking forward to trying it. I've never been convinced by any of them but I love the flight model of this one so I have fingers crossed for the amphib version.