Snoopy wrote:
From my instructor point of view, once the basics are understood and manifested, I try to remember this quote: Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.
The one I heard was: “Steal a man’s wallet and he will be broke for a day. Teach a man to fly and he will be broke for a lifetime.”
I can recommend the two Pooley’s books, although these really cover the practical aspects rather than the theoretical knowledge examinations, they are still a good and well worth read:
Air Pilot’s Manual 5: https://www.pooleys.com/shop/pooleys-air-pilot-publishing/air-pilots-manual-volume-5-radio-navigation-instrument-flying-apm-easa-book/
The EASA IR Skill Test Guide: https://www.pooleys.com/shop/pooleys/a-guide-to-the-easa-ir-flight-test-jonathan-shooter/
There has been a bit of a development on that front for the better at least. It is possible to leave a comment on the question using the new “online” system. No idea at what point these get read, but certainly they should be accessible if one was to appeal the result.
Probably adding “Not CBIR LO” would be sufficient given the time constraint of the exam. Of course this requires some memory of the actual LO’s.
I am building a doc with the LO’s and topics where I have seen questions that shouldn’t be. Hopefully this can assist others in future, but will need more feedback from future candidates since I’m hoping not to be taking them too often!!
That – questions not supposed to be there – has been a persistent problem for many years.
It is made more complicated by the fact you aren’t allowed to make notes which you take away, but you can’t appeal questions and get them credited unless you can state which ones they were! The system is rigged against you.
So you have to make notes covertly, or make notes and hand them to the invigilator (the exam supervisor) in the hope they will be passed on, which is probably unlikely.
Word of caution. If you sit the exams in the U.K. now, you will be very unlikely to pass using the question banks alone. The exam question bank has been significantly overhauled.
Unfortunately during this overhaul it would appear that something has gone awry with matching questions to learning objectives. Ie. There is a very good chance you will get questions on things you are not supposed to even know for CBIR.
This is a real pain because where the theory providers have gone to some effort to actually adapt their materials to be CBIR relevant (taking out the bits from ATPL/CPL that are really not needed), this comes undone at the exam point.
It is a really good idea to actually review the Learning Objectives for each subject so that in the event the exam is asking you something outside of them this can be flagged.
At £70+ per exam, which in some equates to at least £5 per question you’d like to think they would attempt to make the questions relevant.
lava wrote:
So, back to CB-IR and theory exam. What books will take me there in the best way?
For the theory, inquire for a demo login with different providers and go with the one who’s style fits you best. Bristol, CAT Europe etc… +1 here for Erlends books. Good stuff!
You can check the EASA FCL learning objectives and get an overview of the theoretical knowledge goals. You’ll see that it is A LOT!
The theory that you will actually need to be a safe IFR pilot, i.e. what is relevant, will be learned during practical IFR flying instruction and thereafter when you have your “ticket” and gain experience yourself.
From my instructor point of view, once the basics are understood and manifested, I try to remember this quote: Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.
Thus my goal is to instruct how to gather the critical information for and to execute an IFR flight (due diligence, note special procedures and weather/aeronautical decision making) instead of simply going “do this like that, copy paste”.
For the exam, unfortunately the answer is rote memorization of the question banks. AviationExam works well there.
Still need more beta testers and guinea pigs! Of course you will get the books for free.
The two first books can be found on “Apple Books”: https://books.apple.com/no/author/erlend-vaage/id1534304178?itsct=books_toolbox&itscg=30200&ls=1.
Meteorology is right around the corner!
I did CBIR exams and now doing my ATPL on top of them, while it’s redundant, I find it’s hard to do ATPL at first go just to start an IR training, the amount of work is just huge unless you are full time on it and the amount of motivation is tiny, unless you dream of flying a B737 for living or PC12 for fun it’s hard to keep steam going while flying a Cub or C172…
CBIR exams can be done in 7 days by 5h study of QB question/answers and explanations and hit the iron while it’s hot, the hassle IMO is rather logistics (e.g. taking precious time off work to go to sit them in some ***hole), ATPL exams in the other hand seems to need more own in-depth study for things to sink and planning for things to work, you have to know and go over the LOs IMO (going over QDB quickly while commuting to work does not guarantee a pass, I know that the hard way 
)
I’d advise doing the whole ATPL theory. Few years after getting your IR you may want to become an instructor or do some commercial flying. I did my IR first, because I didn’t expect at the time that I would ever need anything more than a PPL/IR. I didn’t enjoy preparing for the same 7 exams again when doing ATPL.
As for preparing, the most efficient method is to use a question database and work from there. Aviationexam has reference materials and explanations for every question. ATPLquestions doesn’t have good explanations, but has a current QB. Use that just before your exams. Additionally, I used a set of 14 books from Oxford when the QB explanations were not enough.
All this is a memory exercise. You’ll learn instrument flying in the plane with your instructor.
I’m in the process of writing new CB-IR books now, and it will not be some trimmed ATPL-books.
There will be updated Learning Objectives for CB-IR effective from sometime in 2021 (not many changes though).
Drop me an e-mail if you want to «beta test» the books at erlend (at) avimedia.no – or be one of the first ones to get them.
