Just watched One Six Right, a documentary about the Van Nuys Airport; and more, a story about the romance of flying. I learned to fly helicopters at VNY. I loved flying from there, and even just driving by it. The 94[sup]th[/sup] Aero Squadron restaurant at the northeast end of the field has great prime rib and French onion soup. VNY is one of my favourite places.
The film describes the history of the airport, and has lots of beautiful flying. The score is very… soothing. Perhaps a bit much. I thought it was more suited to the end credits of a ‘chick flick’. I thought the film could have been more in-depth. Yes, there’s the history; but I thought it could have shown more about the airport operations and the unsung heroes that make it work. Basically, it’s eye-candy for pilots: P-51s, L-39s, Cessnas, Beechcrafts, Lears, T-6s, Pitts…
The ‘special features’ are a little bit sparse. Basically just more images with the same music. A couple of the deleted scenes are nice though. And there are ‘Easter eggs’. You access them by getting instructions at the website linked above. The first one is cute, but nothing I really needed to see – a few takes of a kid in a Corsair-shaped pedal car. The second is vintage 8mm footage of the airport and an Ercoupe. One of the scenes actually makes the Ercoupe look fast! Nice. The third set of instructions require answering three questions before you can have them. I’ll have to go back and get two of the answers.
For me, this DVD was worth buying because I love to fly and I’ve spent a lot of time at VNY. I think it does a good job of describing the ‘romance of flight’, which may help non-pilots ‘get’ what we go on about. The images are beautiful. Only I found the music a little tiresome. It’s a decent overview of VNY, but I wish there had been more. On a ten-scale, I’d give it an 8.