Her first inclination was to go the tower route because the private pilot from whom she had received her initial advice about training, an active IFR-flying professional with his own complex single-engine airplane, had advocated doing so. He was a business associate of her husband and had passed her credible-authority test. On the other hand, her brother was a working agriculture pilot, and his after-hours aircraft, an old Piper Cub, was the machine in which she had gotten her first taste of piloting during a flight from a backyard strip. This had been lots of fun, and she had already learned a lot-even without a control tower to be found anywhere. He, too, was a credible witness for his preferred brand of flying.
I knew the pilot who had urged her to train at our big airport with its gleaming, renovated control tower. He is a good friend and former student (private and instrument) of mine. He also is a product of his long-haul cross-country aviation experience. And of all the pilots I know, he is one of the most devoted bells-and-whistles guys out there. Autopilots, advanced navigation systems, and systems monitors glow in his airplane's panel-the more gadgetry and interconnectivity, the happier he is. True, he puts all that stuff to good use. But it isn't much of an exaggeration to say that he's the kind of fellow who'd file an instrument flight plan to taxi his Centurion from his hangar to the upper ramp to give the airplane a bath, if they'd let him do it. And he'd taxi with guidance from the moving map on his GPS. At least I tease him this way when we discuss the relative merits of the different styles of aviation. He is an effective advocate for aviation as he knows it, and he can tell tales of difficult flights to and arrivals at unfamiliar destinations, smoothed and eased to an infinite degree by technology and air traffic control.
But there's also that other side of the coin. Had the lady seeking a milieu for her flight training encountered another friend of mine, also an active member of the same aviation community, she would have received very different advice-more in line with her cropdusting brother's views and equally larded with the fervent rhetoric of a true believer.
Feigning gruffness, this pilot would have demanded to know what it was she wanted to do-go to flight school or broadcasting school? "Radios don't fly; airplanes do," he might say. "If you want to make things go up and down at the push of a button, go ride the elevator. If you want the highest quality communications links possible and to know precisely where you are and how fast you are going at all times, stay home, sit in a chair, and call someone on a fiber-optic telephone. Smaller airports make better pilots," he would righteously (and rightly) claim. You'll never be nervous about flying from short, obstructed runways or unpaved surfaces or botch them on a checkride, if you've been flying from smaller fields since day one. Nor will you ever grow dangerously dependent on a voice in your ear to keep you clear of opposing traffic if you've learned to use your own eyeballs from the beginning.
She knew that this point of view also had representation in the local pilot community. And it was possible to select either kind of airport without straying more than a few miles from home. That's why I was being called on to break the tie. I saw it as a wonderful test of my triangulation skills because I have sympathies with both camps and I am comfortable in either environment.
The trick, I said, is to avoid acquiring either of the extreme pilot personality types these two environments can produce. Don't become a golden-throated incompetent, magnificent on the radio but incapable of making decisions without help from a tower controller. Nor should you become the "stealth student," launching from your little grass strip, all electronic devices permanently set to Os- car Foxtrot Foxtrot, and sneaking, thief-like, around the edges of controlled airspace, terrified of controllers, having received your training from an equally terrified flight instructor. There are far too many of both of these kinds of pilots, I told her, and the only thing worse than knowing that one of them is flying nearby is not knowing that one of them is flying nearby.
Towered airports are wonderful places to train, I said, as long as you get away from towered airports as soon as possible in your training and see how things are done where other half lives, because the modus operandi there is very different. The same is true for trainees coming from nontowered airports. (We used to call them uncontrolled fields, I explained, but this term is now politically incorrect.) Don't let any single dimension of aviation fix itself too strongly in your understanding of how things must be done, because the by-product of such comfort is an offsetting measure of discomfort with other ways of doing things.
That's all intuitive. Here are some things that aren't. It may surprise you, I told her, to know that pilots training out in the provinces-that is, at nontowered fields-find tower operations quite easy to pick up-you just do what they tell you and learn to anticipate instructions from the very limited repertoire of possibilities they have to offer you. A few visits and a few hours working in the traffic pattern, and even some time at home listening in on the aviation frequencies, should lead to comfort. (Communications techniques are just about the only "flying" skills you can actively study at home.) One major difference may be the variety of sizes and speeds of traffic with which you will be intermingling, especially if your home base is small and the local towered field is of substantial size. This may put those safe taxiing intervals and wake-turbulence-avoidance procedures you've read about in the forefront of your thinking.
By contrast, the pilot from a towered airport who arrives in do-it-yourselfer country may be nonplussed by the ambiguity of it all-especially if there is no welcoming voice of unicom to provide winds, recommended runways, etc. It may require a foray over the airport-flown respectably above traffic-pattern altitude-to check out the windsock, followed by descent and maneuvering for the correct traffic pattern entry to the runway best aligned with the wind. Or if there is no wind, you may need to know whether the place has a designated calm-wind runway for landings or takeoffs. The information is in your Airport/Facility Directory, so there is no excuse for not knowing the local rules.
Places like this, while homier and more informal than towered hubs, still have etiquette and a set of rules that you will be expected to observe. Flying right-hand traffic patterns to left-traffic-designated runways is both rude and dangerous. Doing so would mark you as a boor and make you less welcome next time. Radio use is permitted here, but not required. Some of the locals may not even have radios, but their money is as good as yours at the gas pumps. So listen as well as transmit, and never key that mic without first ascertaining that someone else isn't already on the air.
The debate over whether towered airports are better for training than nontowered airports is analogous to arguing over whether turns are better than straight-and-level or climbs are better than descents. We need them both, and we need to be comfortable with both to be fully functional as aviators.
If both choices are readily available as training bases, and if it will be possible to experience both kinds of operations at will during your program, let some other factor such as cost, type of airplane, or personal convenience make up your mind for you. If there is only one game in town, make a special effort, very early in the game, to make a few trips to the other milieu, to keep it from taking on an off-putting aura of strangeness.
So that's the good news, I told the student: You really cannot make a bad decision about choosing a towered or nontowered training base. The decision may help determine your genetic code as a pilot, but mutation is always possible. (Only flight instructors are permitted to clone, however.)
A concluding reflection: A clergyman who is a friend of mine recently told one of those apocryphal tales about a wise man who is called upon to mediate a disagreement between two parties. Party A comes before him and tells his tale of woe and betrayal. The wise man replies, "You are clearly in the right." Party B comes before him and defends his actions. The wise man again says, "You are clearly in the right." This seeming conflict in the wise man's responses is pointed out by his assistant. The wise man replies, "You're right, too."
Now that's triangulation.
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