Oh man what an awful month flying wise this has been. The weather has left me grounded every time I tried to fly so I put in a lot of time on my ATPL theory. This is a quick recap of ATPL Month 9: Flight Planning, Radio Nav and Aircraft General Knowledge.
As you can see from the last month I have made some great progress and I am currently around 90% through the syllabus in the ATP digital software. I have had just 2 days with no study and I have been putting in on average 4-5 hours a day, it’s been intense.
This only tells half the story, I will now move to the question banks (well once I finish) and refer back to the books often to try to fill in any gaps in my knowledge, so in reality I think finishing the module is only 50% done and the question bank practice is the other 50%.
I have spoken to a few people recently and every is in agreement that the exams seem to be going through huge changes and a lot of people are just about passing some exams and failing others.
On to the subjects, to be fair I didn’t really enjoy that many. AGK, Radio Nav and Air Law are quite a lot of facts to remember and sometimes it feels like my brain is working overtime because these facts are just relentlessly being served up and drilled into your head.
Flight planning I found more “fun”. You use maps and charts to work out your answers. There are two things that I guarantee you will hate MRJT and LRJT. At the moment the feedback seems to be that these questions are not showing up, but they can be put back in at any time!
I have changed my revision week to April due to the speed I was getting through the material and have changed my exams to May. I will see how the progress is over the next few months and if needed push the exams back a month to June, time will tell.
Ah well, lets hope that I can get some flying in this upcoming month to break up this endless study.
I really feel for you! I believe my course (or possibly the one after) were one of the last who had the luxury of being able to memorize the question banks!! Personally, I never really did that. I think I memorized most of Rnav and Mass & Balance because there were just so few questions in the bank that it happened organically, but I know many many lads who did just memorize the whole caboodle! Many of whom now have jobs with airlines!
It must be bloody tough working full time and studying for ATPL ground school exams. I tip my hat to you sir, it must seem like there are not enough hours in the day!
I hated Flight Planning and GNav with an absolute passion. They were the bane of my existence. I found Air Law, HPL, Mass & Balance and VFR/IFR Comms fairly straightforward….
Good luck mate! 🙂
It really does feel like having two full time jobs, especially them days when all you want to do is sit down and chill out with a movie but instead, you have to study.
I just checked Rnav has 750 ish questions at the moment and mass and balance have 368 (quite possibly the lowest). Met had 1600 questions and there were still near questions coming up.
I heard comms were really simple but I’ve heard people have been failing them recently …. shoulda have done my theory a few years back!
Hang on in there and trust in yourself – you’re doing all the right things… 🙂