Rara-Avis Sims Flying Flea - The weirdest flying aircraft and I love it - Microsoft Flight Simulator

Over the last few weeks, we have been blessed with many good releases for MSFS, and the new Flying Flea by Rara-Avis Sims is no exception. It is a wonderful depiction of one of the most unusual aircraft ever built and probably the weirdest looking and flying one in the sim. As you can see in the video, it has no ailerons, elevators or rudder pedals. Instead of an elevator the whole wing acts as a control surface. And instead of aileron control the stick operates the rudder. Which makes flying it a challenge, you basically have to forget most of what you know, about flying an aircraft. So, the Flying Flea might not be for everybody, but if you like a challenge, explore something new or enjoy unconventional aircraft, I'm sure you'll love this one.

The Flying Flea has quite an interesting story. It was designed by Henri Mignet and first flew in 1933. His idea was to create a Model T of the skies. Meaning a cheap to build, affordable aircraft for the masses. The French nicknamed the Ford Model T Pou de la Route, Louse of the Road, because it was so numerous. That is why Mignet called his aircraft Pou-du-Ciel, which was translated to Flying Flea. His vision never came true, however over 300 Flying Fleas in many different forms and by many different individuals and companies were built.

Rara-Avis Sims Flea, includes 10 different versions, with 4 different engines. They are all very detailed and overall, very nicely done. If I remember correctly there are currently no custom sounds, however the sound currently used, are fitting and the developer stated some months/weeks ago on the Flight Simulator forum, that they might get updated somewhere in the future. Overall, I enjoy the Flea very much and can only think of one very small thing I don't like, which is the startup effect. I like that the developer added an effect, however in my opinion smoke would have looked better.

This flight was done over beautiful Idaho, from the Orofino Airport (S68), which was modeled by MP Scenery. In my opinion it's a very nice little scenery. It is currently on sale in the ingame Marketplace (as of 27/02/23).


Hardware used:
Ryzen 7 5800X
32GB RAM
RTX 3080

00:00 Intro
00:21 Startup
01:40 Taxi
02:52 Takeoff
03:16 External Takeoff View
03:49 Trying to stay in the air
06:50 Aerobatics over the Dworshak Dam
08:39 Ground View of Aerobatics
09:58 Flying back to the field
12:27 Landing
13:27 External Landing View
14:07 Taxi
16:05 Shutdown
16:42 Pictures of some of the other variants