Hi guys,
I thought some of your aspiring IR students might find this interesting. I'm at the start of the EASA IR Exams (have dusty FAA IR) and it might be an interesting reference for what is required to pass (or fail!) exams.
My study period has started 3 weeks before the first two exams - Air Law & Met. Notes so far:
1) Used one of the mentioned GS naturally but focused on QB instead of material. Note I have learnt some of the relevant material for the IR
2) Have moved to AviationExam as I find it better (has good explanations)
Progress so far
T-3 - Prep Started
T-2 Completed GS QB for AirLaw/Met. Completed AviationExam QB for AirLaw.
Air Law Comments -
it doesn't appear to bad. It's non complex type, rote learning material so one can start to recognise the questions and answer quickly if focused on the QB. A memory test.
Met
Lots of content, easier to understand the material than to memorise it. Struggle a little remembering wind forces, vapor pressure detail, and some more I'll type later.
p.s. how do I get line breaks to recognise correctly here?
DMEarc
Keep in mind that AviationExam makes you learn much more than you have to. They do not retire old questions so you get everything that ever was in the QB.
Each CAA has its own subset of the QB. I started with AviationExam but then switched to Peters Exam which only has about 1/3rd of the questions of AviationExam but it was spot on for the IR exam in Germany.
how do I get line breaks to recognise correctly here?
See Posting Tips, above your text entry box.
To force a line break without doing a blank line, put 2 spaces at the end of the line.
Final Weekend of study before the exam.
In the past two weeks, I have been somewhat distracted by work and managed to get as a little as 1.5 hours of 'quality' study time. Some addition veggie time on the sofa with the ipad late at night, but the often I give in for the evening after clicking on some obviously incorrect answers.
I switched to AviationExam 2 weeks ago (which has unfixed bugs on iOS7), and my results this morning are:
Air Law, 89%, 92%
Met, 83%, 85%, 88%, 96%, 87%*
*I have included past incorrect answers in sequential exams so latter results are inflated.
I will spend the rest of the day doing more questions, about 550 questions done so far this morning. I am somewhat concerned that many of the CATS questions I have not seen on AE, so I may well dedicated tomorrow to CATS QB unless someone can advise the best, most accurate QB for last minute cramming.
Some notes 1)none of the material is difficult, it's pure volume.
2)some answers are quiet easy to remember if repeated several times in the same day
3)some are just stupid (in my opinion) - for example, just now I got a question incorrect. Correct answer stated max windshear occurs just above a inversion. I suspected it occurred when flying through where the wind delta occurs.
Second question - at Gatwick, is it best just grab a cab across to CAA building or walk?
I think you need to be doing 85% consistently, before going for the exams.
I don't think any of the online QBs is much better than any other. People speak well of the CATS in-house one but really I don't think anybody has done any of them well. The old FTO QBs were done by a man from the FTO quickly interviewing students as soon as they left the exam room, but the online QBs are just compilations of all the JAA QB crap, with no weeding of the bad ones.
The UK CAA exams are easier than any online QB because they have stripped out the crap questions.
But don't get too casual on the 24-question exams (HP&L, IFR Comms) because 7 wrong and you fail, and you then have a whole load of hassle because you can't retake for 2 months, which shifts everything along.
From the Gatwick train station distance, see page 10 here for a little map. It looks walkable.
Ok, night before the exam, some observations:
1) It's possible to do full AL QB in circa 1 hour (360questions). Automatic answering becomes possible with incorrect answers usually just being too keen to click. There isn't much to understand in AL, appears to be a rememberance game. CATs QB differs from AviationExam in more ICAO type questions, more questions similar to PPL. Ability to set incorrect questions in AviationExam to repeat is invaluable to remember them.
2) Met has a lot more material, each run at the QB requires concentration and can not be done as speedily as AL. It needs to be understood rather than remembered but the QB helps a lot understanding. I have QNH/temp adjustments down to a few seconds each - just remember 'undo what you did going through transition layer to find real number'.
3) Weekend - the weekend before the exam is extremely important, I suggest this becomes absolutely dedicated to study. I suspect circa 16-18 hours of productive QB work has gone in so far this w/e.
*productivity using AviationExam iPad app seems much higher than regular website QB.
Let me put in a few tips from my 2011 writeup:
On the day of the exams, turn up early with an internet-connected laptop (or an Ipad, etc) and study the QB in the lounge outside the exam room, or in the car park outside if the building is not yet open. There is free wifi in the CAA lounge but it is very weak elsewhere so GPRS/3G connectivity is highly desirable. Every nasty/ambiguous question whose answer you can memorise could make the vital difference... I know I picked up a few % doing that.
Unless you have great close-up eyesight, bring a pair of cheap supermarket +2/+3 reading glasses as much of the chart material is badly photocopied, some text on the Jepp charts supplied is tiny, but magnifiers are banned. The circular slide rule is not mandatory as there are no questions which are purely wind calculations (although the GTS study material contained loads of them) but a means of calculating wind drift is still needed as a part of a few possible questions. A non-programmable calculator with trig functions is allowed but the invigilator will check that the memory is cleared.
Don't forget to bring your passport. It is required to check that somebody else isn't sitting the exam for you, and it will be examined to make sure you have not filled it with answers
Obviously bad-English questions, ones with multiple correct answers, and questions which are believed to be off-syllabus for the IR, should be appealed. You cannot take anything out of the exam so the procedure is to write down the question ID numbers and hand this together with your details to the invigilator before leaving the room. One pilot I know appealed five questions and got them all credited!
If you really have no idea which of the answers to pick, the following strategy works surprisingly well:
1) Eliminate any options which are obviously nonsense
2) If it is a question of a regulatory nature, go for the one which is second-strictest
3) If it is a question on a compromised terrain clearance (e.g. flying in cold / low pressure air) go for the lowest actual altitude
4) Go for the one with the longest answer
In options like "2 nm" or "2 miles" ignore the "miles" version. I wonder what the writer of these questions was smoking...
In altimetry calculations, 1 millibar is 27 feet, not 30 feet.
Good luck 
Good luck tomorrow. And if you're not staying nearby, make sure you leave plenty of time for your journey, and then double it. Ask me how I know...
Good luck for tomorrow!
You can walk it in about 20 minutes, but don't try it from the airport end just before an exam. Take a bus or taxi.
On the way back, you can go past the beehive, through the lorry car park, to the right of the stream, then across the little bridge and then you get to search for the emergency exit that takes you back into the terminal past some Swiss baggage handling desk right next to the train tunnel exit. If I remember correctly...
As I said, don't try this before the exam :-)
Post Exam Feedback
-AirLaw, 29 questions, no tricky or surprise questions. If you know the content you'd get the mark. -Met, 61 questions, some carry double marks, in particular ones which reference charts. Unlike AL, you must understand the content and engage. Some questions had two reasonable answers so depth of knowledge helps. No mind twisting questions from the QB.
General Comments - AL appears easy enough (I hope I don't fail after saying this) - Met was as expected, not easy not difficult. Reasonable.
It appears, for all IR candidates, the problem is NOT the CAA exams - it's the dud questions from EASA which should be attracting the focus. If EASA QB was cleaned up, like CAA exams, I think more would undertake this venture,
