Archive for December, 2009

Yup, its out ! Finally!

Sales are picking up already from simMarket, and if so desired you can also buy it from our product page (see link on the right) using the Flight1 wrapper system, or on CD (personally manufactured!).

The Lizzie has finally seen the light… or rather, dark…. and is starting to make her way on many PC’s around the world! It has been 6 years since I started with this project and I am thrilled to finally see it finished. AND with a beautifully rendered and working model. Counting down the minutes for it to appear on the torrent sites….. *cough*. Anyway, I’ve been working day and night, literally, these past 3 weeks to get it ready for Christmas, as I promised.

Thanks to Chuck Jodry for all his quality work on it, and Jan Kees Blom for his beautiful additional paints. And Jaap for his Tangmere Airfield and Athlète Operation.

Many more have contributed, and they are all mentioned in the manual. Thanks folks !!

Some more info here, on the product page.

Next project: building a dedicated website for the Lizzie and associated aircraft and facts. And then getting the Lockheed Hudson built, an aircraft that was also used for clandestine operations.
FSX is not a military sim, but ultimately very well suited for these kind of aircraft… and it so happens I like this era and NEED pet projects to stay sane…… so there !

I can only hope that you’ll love Lizzie as much as I do……. and that it can help remember those brave men flying them, and what they ultimately did for us !

The Lysander is almost ready….. it will be a close call tomorrow night, but I am still confident.
Meanwhile, I thought to put up the book that ’caused’ all this in our little Amazon shop. It is ‘We landed by moonlight’ written by the late Hugh B. Verity, one of the pilots and commanders of the 161 Squadron. It is his book that sparked the idea of modeling the aircraft in FS and tell the story of these brave men.

As of tomorrow night you can do what I have been doing for over a year now: relive and re-fly those hair raising missions in the middle of the night over a mostly dark France (well, not so dark these days, use your imagination!).

Check out Hugh’s book in our bookshop (see the column on the right).

Our long awaited Lysander Special Operations package will be launched before Christmas 2009 after all. The model included is based on the Lysander still flying at the Shuttleworth Collection in the UK, which is painted in the colors of the Lysanders of 161th Squadron that ferried special agents and spies to and from occupied France between 1942 and 1944, at night…..”.

“…. but thanks to Chuck Jodry and JanKees Blom we will have a model without the extra long range tank and painted in various liveries. This model has been under development for more than three years and the project started back in 2003. So you can call it a ‘pet project’ if nothing else.

Also included is a wonderful virtual cockpit, a very special STOL flight model, initially designed by Rob Young of RealAir fame, an extensive user manual AND a Secret Operations Flight Guide, including some 5 flights based upon the real flights of that time.
More flights will be added for free next year!

Last but not least visitors of the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden Airfield will find a CD version of the package in the museum gift shop and half of the proceeds of those sales will go to the Shuttleworth Collection fund.

Meanwhile, FSAddon is now working on a Lockheed Hudson, as a follow-up to the project. The Hudson was also used to ferry agents to occupied Europe and will be published next year we hope.

The ‘Lysander Secret Operations’ package will cost Euro 24,95 at simMarket, or US$ 34,95 at FSAddon’s own shop. A CD version will be available as a special service from FSAddon Publishing later…..”.

We’re in the home stretch. Just a few things to be finished and one or two last-minute errors to correct.

Dec 1-11 – building/writing of the manual

Dec 12-13-14 – building of the final installer packages

Dec 15 – 21 Flying, testing, building Operations Guide

Dec 21 – final build in Installers

Dec 22 – prepare simMarket and FSAddon product pages

Dec 23 – RELEASE !!

Keep crossing your fingers for us…..

That’s what the package will be called, and I expect to get thing launched BEFORE CHRISTMAS !

And that’s not all. Thanks to the voluntary work of Jan Kees Blom of The Netherlands, and Chuck Jodry of Canada, we’ll also add another model AND a number of different liveries to the package. Thanks guys !!!!

I am now hard at work of finishing the Pilot’s Notes (or the User Manual in regular terms), and the Operations Guide to help you make the flights the SOE Lysander was used for during the war.

Here are some pictures of the final version:

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