The essence of this technique is to imagine that you are in the pilot's seat, visualize the out-the-window scene, feel your hands and feet on the controls, hear the airplane in your mind and to the greatest degree possible, transport yourself into this virtual cockpit

1. I was asked the question, "I'm having trouble with landings. Is there any practice
away from the plane I can do?"
Well, yes there is. It is remarkably cost effective. I recommend it to all my students. Here it
is: Think about landings.
This technique may sound pretty crazy, but twice in my life it worked miracles for
me. One was learning to ski and the other was learning to land an airplane. In both
cases, my instructor said something to the effect that he could not believe that I was
the same student who he saw floundering during the previous lesson. Since then, I
have discovered that it is used often in sports such as gymnastics and baseball, that
require advanced motor skills. Here is how it helped me with landings and taxiing:
I was learning to fly in a 65-HP J-3 Cub and could not even taxi without driving off
onto the grass. My flying was OK, but once on the ground, my directional control
went in the tank. That night I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about flying. I imagined
that I was in the cockpit, moving my feet on the rudder pedals. I kept stomping on a
rudder pedal too late and too hard. Then I would stay on the pedal too long. I replayed
in my mind everything that I had done right and wrong. I discovered that I was
moving my hands and feet as I visualized the airplane's response. I went through this
mental exercise repeatedly until, in my mind, I had the airplane under control.
Amazingly, by the time I flew the next day, I new what I had to do. In a way, that
should not have been surprising, my instructor had told me how, demonstrated the
proper technique, told me what I was doing wrong and had me feel the controls as he
flew. So it was all in my brain, I just had to get it all sorted out in my mind.
In my case, having mastered directional control, landings fell into place.
The essence of this technique is to imagine that you are in the pilot's seat, visualize
the out-the-window scene, feel your hands and feet on the controls, hear the airplane
in your mind and to the greatest degree possible, transport yourself into this virtual
cockpit. Remember exactly what the outside world looked like when your instructor
demonstrated a landing and visualize yourself in the same circumstances. Think about
your botched landings; analyze them until you are convinced that you know what you
did wrong and how you should have done it. Then mentally do it right and mentally
recover from the botched landings before your airplane would have touched down.
One of the most difficult aspects of learning to land is learning to know how high you
are off the runway. Yet you know what the world looks like when you taxi. Mentally
add a foot to that, and that is what you should see before you land.
One final bit of advice about mentally landing that applies equally to the real thing.
Don't land the airplane: let it land itself. I have had several students struggle with this

2. concept. They believed that there was some specific action that the pilot did that
caused the airplane to land right then.
Not so. It doesn't matter if you are doing attitude landings or full stall landings, the
airplane lands when it is ready. If you try to make it land sooner, it will bite you.
So as you visualize your way to better landings, remember that you move the controls
to attain and maintain the attitude you want. Your focus must be on attitude and
certainly not control position. You must see the proper attitude in your mind or will
not succeed in controlling the airplane when flying the real thing, so you certainly
must see the proper attitude in the virtual world of your mind when you visualize
landings away from the airplane.
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