Most veterans of Flight Simulator will remember Bill and Lynn Lyons, makers of the freeware and payware brand Custom Classics. The typical Lyon's package was about $12 and included one or more vintage aircraft, animated scenery, and some kind of boat or automobile. When you purchased something from them, it always had your name on it somewhere; that was the custom part.

The Lyons are retired now, and all of the Custom Classics are freeware; you can find them by searching for the authors? name in the AVSIM file library. But Bill Lyons was not only a gifted modeler; he was also a generous teacher.

Bill Ortis, who made the package under review here, was a student of Lyons, and it shows in his work. His Bugatti Pylon Racer, which staff reviewer Marc Radford wrote about several weeks ago, was a Custom Classic in all but name. It was inexpensive, featured vintage airplanes, came with custom scenery, and included two ground vehicles.

The package under review here, Operation: Valkyrie, is made from the same pattern, only on a bigger scale. The airplanes are bigger, the models are more complicated, there is a water vessel as well as a ground vehicle, there is much, much more scenery, and whereas the Bugatti package came with 18 mission flights, Operation: Valkyrie has 65.

Together, the missions add up to a story and a career. It begins with a young German pilot learning to fly gliders. Soon, he is inducted into the Luftwaffe and learns to fly powered aircraft, first a single-engine trainer and later a six-engine transport. In the process, he becomes involved with a high-level conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. This is where fiction merges with history: there was a conspiracy in real life, and its code name was Operation Valkyrie.











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