Vivid Visualization™ I have used visualization my whole life from the time I was very young till now as an adult. When I was very young I took interest with a strong passion to flying airplanes. I would day dream (visualize but not know that this day dreaming was a form of visualization) of flying airplanes. In my day dreaming I would try to make it as real as I could to that of actually doing it. I would think about what it would involve in body movements and feel. My father was a commercial pilot and from the age of four and five we started going to the airport and watch the planes take-off and land which I continued to do on my own even as I got older. He took me up only one time in a private plane when I was sixteen years old. The flight lasted thirty minutes and I only took control of the plane for ten minutes in flight. We made one take-off and one landing and my father did it. For many years I would visualize the take-off and landing. The landing was my favorite part of flying so I really dreamed (visualizing) doing this and this is usually the most difficult part of flying for people.
In my flight training with me flying the plane and my instructor watching me from the right seat I was asked by the traffic control tower to make a short pattern landing. I was flying downwind parallel to the runway at 1,000 feet. This tower request meant that I could not go out past the runway to set the landing up with a base turn and final leg turn where I would put the flaps down and slow the plane down to set it up for the landing. It meant that I would have to put the plane in a steep banked turn and drop steeply down towards the end of the runway from 1,000 feet. Doing this would create many critical situations of flight and I only had ten hours of flying time. My instructor asked me if I thought I could do it. I told him without reservation and very excitedly, yes. He looked at me for a couple of seconds and I guess I convinced him. He told me to respond to the tower and tell them I would do it. The reason the traffic control tower was asking me to do this short pattern is because there were several planes stacked a little further out from the runway on final and they wanted to go ahead and get me landed. I dropped steeply down in a steep banked turn on top of the end of the runway with no flaps and with my air speed climbing too high to land the plane but the speed was within the structural limits of the airplane. Remember, there are no brakes on the airplane while in flight like that of a car on the ground. Putting a plane in a steep banked turn sets the plane up for a possible spin of the plane if the controls are not coordinated correctly. The most experienced stunt pilot needs a mininum of 1,500 feet to pull out of a spin. And at just the right time I would have to come out of the turn to pull the nose of the plane up to slow it down while allowing the correct distance over the runway for the plane to continue dropping down toward the runway as it was slowing down with the nose up. To start this flare too late would mean it would crash into the ground and to start it too early could mean I would run out of runway to land the plane. And there were planes stacked coming in for a landing behind me to add to the pressures and distractions. The other critical factor in this maneuver is that in pulling the nose up at too much angle to slow it down could very easily stall the plane and it would drop down on the runway in a crash. There are many critical factors in this maneuver that would crash the plane and I only had ten hours of flying time with only a few landings. This was a very advanced maneuver. But as difficult as this may seem to believe, I honestly had no fear, anxiety or apprehension. I was completely at ease and very confident and excited to do this while also acknowledging my responsibility to do this with precision. There was a balance in me between the difficulty of the execution and the confidence of not being over confident. It was like I had done this maneuver a thousand times even though this was my first time. I made the landing flawlessly without any instructions and help from my instructor. My instructor said I had done it perfectly and was very impressed. So, how was this maneuver possible for me to have done flawlessly without ever having done it? I was able to do this without ever having done it because I had spent hundreds of hours over many years of visualizing doing it. My visualization had gotten to the point of where it was very "vivid" and "real" in my mind’s eye even with the "feel" of the maneuver. I would ask my father about flying maneuvers and he verbally would tell me about doing them. Then, I would day dream (visualize) doing these maneuvers. My love for flying had caused me to visualize many different types of maneuvers. Your visualization to be successful must become "vivid" and "real" in your mind's eye with the "feel." And passion, joy and enthusiam must be what drives your visualization. You can only work so hard and so long physically. But you can exercise in your mind beyond what you can do physically. And you can exercise in your mind while you are in different places and at different times.