Cessna 185 Skywagon

In FSEconomy

In FSE, it carries (up to) 5 passengers, and can be had from ~$240,000. The monthly cost for an upgraded model is ~v$1,500.

In FSE (as of October 2025), there are only 4 planes listed as for sale, with the lowest at v$240k (as mentioned above), which I assume is the “move now” price. However, there are ~200 models available for rent worldwide.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator

Fixed landing gear; tail dragger.

The plane is included for free in MSFS 2024, however the default tank setup does not match FSEconomy. To fix that, I created a variant with the “right” (and larger) feul tanks (see “Recommended Downloads” below). However, the plane does not have an autopilot, so I’m not sure you’d really want to attempt the stated range of ~800 nm. There is a GPS and the top CDI can be set to track it to fly you fly that GPS course. Online, the concensus is that it trims out well, but I stuggle to get it flying completely flat and find it has a tendency to want to fall off to the right, although the later ~~could be a controller issue~~ is me forgetting to flip the fuel switch (between the seats) to feed off both tanks, rather than just the left one.

In MSFS2024, the default panel is very dark and so it make be worthwhile looking up another (lighter) livery.

A couple more tips:

  • the instrument lighting, such as it is, is from the “projector” in the roof. When on, it provides a red glow to make the instruments visible at night. The knob on the side of the “projector” controls the light brightness, and the middle toggle switch turns it on.
  • the default setup is to only feed from the left tank, so you’ll want to swap it to feed from both. The selector is between the pilot and co-pilot seats. This does appear to persist between flight sessions.

Recommended Downloads

My FSE Tanks variant is available to downloadable from GitHub or discuss it on the FSEconomy Forums. Also included is a second variant that FSEconomy maps to the Cessna 182 Skylane. My variant is based on the included (wheel) “fairing” model.

One of the nices changes in MSFS 2024 is that variants and liveries are now separated, so liveries should work with my variant above without other changes.