I really would not call going through these exams as fun and I am doing only the CPL(A) subset for the purpose of obtaining an FI rating.
Been wading through the books since December, fitting in studying around my day job, probably averaging 25-30 hours study each week.
Passed my first four exams in March and have another three booked mid-May. Hope to have all 13 done and dusted by end September.
The process I seem to find works for me is to go through the study materials and then go through the QB for the particular topic to see if I understand it. Once a complete subject has been completed I then go through the QB (Bristol) in its entirety and run through practice exams under “exam conditions” as exam technique is absolutely important with these.
A number of years ago these QBs were pretty much what you would see in the exams but EASA are adding circa 1,500 questions to the CQB each year and removing a similar amount. Also, there are new style “Quadrant” style questions, with CAA UK exams these are limited to type in number answers (they specify the number of decimal places required) or drop down menu options. Knowing the subject will help dividends.
Mass and Balance and Performance are more difficult now than they were a few years ago as you no longer get the CAP docs in full which contain the relevant safety factor requirements! These, together with Air Law are those I’m taking in two weeks time.
I am so thankful I have an FAA IR and therefore am exempt from the IR or ATPL exams by going down the CB-IR route which I would like to do eventually and also add an IRI to my licence.
If you decide to do these exams get yourself added to the Facebook group “ATPL Theory Students”, amazing feedback, advice and help on there!
Does anyone know the lowest cost route to get “get signed off” to sit exams without having to buy the books, do class room?
PF
zuutroy wrote:
The optimal strategy is to just murder the question banks for endless hours. Pay almost no attention to the course material and just read the explanations…[…]
This works for any multiple choice kind of exam, imho. In Germany medical exams are mostly MC questions. If you want to pass the exams you have to just stupidly repeat the MC questions over and over again.
If you want to understand the topic you have to learn in a very different way (depending on your personal “learning type”), but understanding a topic will not necessarily help you to to ace an MC exam on that topic.
Case in point: I did worse at the “human factors” PPL exam than my fellow PPL students without medical training, because I didn’t bother with the questions before as I am supposedly an expert in that field… 
The FAA oral exam is extra focused because the DPE has in front of him the written exam questions which you got wrong 
It’s a few years since I did the FAA paper but I recall focus on practical M&B, Performance planning (using actual type charts ranging from Embraer to Boeing), high altitude emergency procedures, weather, NOTAMs – all quite practical and relevant. They churn the question bank at around 10-15% every three months or so. It might have benefited with more systems and principles of flight content.
You also have the oral exam which is quite focused.
The faa atp is similar but on a smaller scale. I’m clicking through sheppards question bank currently..
Snoopy agree and arguably is the FAA approach to the ATPL technical knowledge exam?
What a waste of time and energy. The actual transfer of knowledge through getting an ATPL must be close to zero.
Reducing the syllabus to what is really important and needed for commercial flight ops and designing a modern lecture/course must be a much better option for all.
Fully agree with #7 post of zuutroy.
Did my 7 IR exams exactly the same way at the end of last year using AvExam QB with their explanations and a few YTube videos. Didn’t rush it and took one or two exams at a time. Achieved 100% twice, the worst one was 91%, it took 5 months. The study was mostly interesting but sometimes annoying due to sheer volume of it.
Paid no attention to IR Comms and only got 70%, passed it on the 2nd attempt with 95%. The optimal strategy is to just murder the question banks for endless hours. Pay almost no attention to the course material and just read the explanations and discussions around each question on Aviation Exam. So many of the questions are extremely frustrating where you have to provide not the correct answer, but the ‘most correct’ answer.
That is very much in line with my own experience doing a 7-exam subset in 2011. There has been much talk in the meantime of (a) the UK CAA having weeded out the duff questions (which the original 1999 ATPL QB was full of, apparently) and (b) new questions have been introduced. I have no personal knowledge of that…
However, while the original QB was obtained under an FOIA request (more details in the above link), the FTOs had for many years before that been generating their own copies of the QB by asking exam candidates to memorise 1 question per person and then a guy standing outside the room would quickly write them down as the candidates came out of the room. And I would expect those running the modern computer QBs to be doing something similar, to keep them roughly up to date. After all, they get loads of feedback from the vast numbers of integrated course students who first banged the computer QB and then sat the real exams and they would have produced copious reports of any differences. Most or all computer QBs are run by an outfit which has some association with an ATPL FTO. Often the owners are the same people…
It is a frustrating and not a little depressing process because the whole thing bears so little relation to flying in the real world, and I would not want to do it again And I did perhaps 1/3 of the work which the full 14 exam set involves.
