CAA General NAV Exam 4th of March 14

[southernjock]

Having sat this CAA (EASA) Exam yesterday I found it incredibly tough and was unable to complete in time. I was however not alone!

The Exam consisted of 60 Qs and 94 marks (normally 80 marks) owing to a large increase in 2 or 3 mark calculation questions and significant decrease in 'one off' theory Qs.

Background: I am an integrated student at one of the big three UK flight schools training towards an ATPL. Out of all the students siting the exam yesterday 83% failed to finish. All of us had previously passed all other Mocks and Tests in our subjects to date.

You never know we could get lucky and pass but I highly doubt it!

I was just wondering if anyone else sat this exam yesterday and had a similar experience? I would be particularly interested in hearing from those at other flying schools to determine if it was just a bad exam of if we were just underprepared?

Thanks in advance and PM me if you would rather not post.

[zondaracer]

I recall a couple years ago that a performance exam for the ATPLs was the same, most of the students could not finish. The students complained to the training providers, who in turn contacted the CAA. Not sure what come out of it...

http://www.pprune.org/professional-pilot-training-includes-ground-studies/453721-atpl-ground-school-new-syllabus-exams-today-agk-pof-perf.html

[contacttower118.2]

Some of the nav exams are tough, no doubt about it. I did my ATPL theory by distance learning but for the brush up classes I had an RAF Nav teaching the subject, I felt well prepared for the exam and while I didn't complete the last few questions I still managed a high 80s mark. Don't know about FTE but I have heard some occasional dissatisfaction with the ground instruction at the other two big integrated schools.

[southernjock]

Yeah we were expecting a tough exam and it was always going to be tight for time.

As for instruction I personally cannot fault the GNAV instruction we have had, again an ex RAF Nav, who knows his stuff and goes out of his way to ensure we fully understand what he is teaching.

[contacttower118.2]

I mean just as a general observation I found that the pure knowledge based exams such as met or air law had more time allocated than really necessary but all the more practical ones such as nav, flight planning etc were very time pressured...would be good of the time could be redistributed a bit!

[paco]

Part of the reason for the time pressure is to simulate a passenger waiting to go flying.

[Live your dream]

I think things are going to get much worse with the new e-exams, probably 2400 new questions are to be introduced in the next 12 months , and they will be written by three subject matter experts, that kind of people, I wish I am wrong, who believe that we are all engineers, meteorologists... What they should do is to remove lots of stupid questions which don't have any sense regarding our professional career.

[Groundloop]

What they should do is to remove lots of stupid questions which don't have any sense regarding our professional career.

And your profile shows you are well qualified to comment on what is required!:ugh:

[Live your dream]

Do you really think that everything you study is going to be useful for your life as a pilot? I don't think so. Do you measure the width of the runway to know the number of threshold stripes required, or the distance between markings regarding a Break-In point? as a pilot, do you really need to know all the requirements to get an AOC? In the cockpit, will you need to calculate the wavelength of a radiowave?

I am almost completely sure that if you give one of these exams to an experienced pilot, he/she will probably fail it or get a low score, and that means that what we are studying is not what we are going to use up there, that's my point of view as an ATPL student.

[speed_alive_rotate]

Agree with a huge amount of what Live Your Dream is saying. Of coarse a huge amount of what we learn in ATPLs is relevant, however there is also way too much irrelevant information to!! The examples given above are prime examples of stuff that certainly does not make you a well learned and good pilot!!!!!
They need to over haul a huge amount of rubbish in these exams! My opinion is they are lazy, as even some questions have been translated from other countries and don't even make sense!!

[Transsonic2000]

I absolutely agree with "Live your dream" - and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one!

In my opinion the former JAA, now EASA syllabus/exam is a shinning textbook example of a failed concept! Because, instead of producing educated and knowledgeable pilots, it rather promotes the kind of "jack of all trades, but master of none" sort of pilot!

[Richard Phillips]

I think there is plenty logic in what we have to learn, comms aside. You do these exams to improve your overall knowledge of the industry, and to understand the basic principles of, the industry we hope to gain employment in.

If you don't want to study it, then don't!

[speed_alive_rotate]

I think some of the comms holds more relevance than other ridiculous stuff as mentioned above Richard.

[byrondaf]

I didn't sit the March one, but sat FP, Gen Nav and Performance in Feb 2014. As far as time goes, I thought there was ample time to do the exam and to go through and check all answers and still have plenty of time left over. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought that it was fairly straight forward?

Only Performance did the exam time seem insufficient, especially as one of the CAP questions was not referenced, and a dodgy question with two answers according to Bristol QB. A few others I spoke to agreed.

I think maybe it comes down to not only knowing the material, but also having hammered BGS QB, question familiarity comes into a bit?

[Stefan123]

How many calculation questions were there in total on average?

Having mine soon.

[byrondaf]

think there were about 5 PET questions, 6 or 7 wind, TAS, G/S questions. Quite a few convergency too. That came to about half the marks.

Nothing unexpected, maybe that's why I didn't have a problem. Did practice questions until I was sick of them. Bristol QB was the exact style you'll get. If you can do those, you'll sail through.

[Chris49]

Having also sat the exams last week at one of the big three, everyone came out of the GNAV exam thinking it really wasn't that bad. Most people stayed till the end, but no one really ran out of time. Don't get me wrong, it was hard, but it was doable. Performance on the other hand, was a travesty. 1 question thats nearly 10% of the entire exam with very very odd answers? Awesome. I have a big issue with the CAA about the CAP graph questions. Because on the last question about temperatures, everyone was fairly unanimously getting the same answers, which was not one of the actual answers. It seems widely regarded that it was the right answer, even though it was not really that close to the calculated answer. My issue comes when we are told that the grounds to appeal a question are there are no right answers, theres more than one, or theres not enough info in the question to answer it. Where does 'closest answer' end and 'no right answer' begin?

Not happy with the CAA on this set.

[southernjock]

Chris49,

Thanks for the GNAV feedback, sounds like you guys all found it okay and weren't short of time. I guess nothing left to do but wait and see what happens to us when the results come out at the end of the week.

Best of luck.

[southernjock]

Got the results last Friday and it went better than expected - passed thankfully with a mark in the high 80% region!

The results from across the remainder of my peers were similar which reflects the complexity of this exam as they were not the normal class average (in the 90%s) that was achieved in the rest of the subjects.

I do still consider the Exam to have been a particularly tough one and a subject to be aware of in terms of exam timekeeping and complexity of questions.

Good luck to anyone sitting it in April!

[GLuis103]

Did my Nav exam last week, found it really tough but was able to pass it, generally time isn´t an issue, I´m normally quick in exams. Nevertheless this was the hardest of them all without a doubt, I guess what made a difference was getting through that question bank over and over...