Originally Posted by
Centaurus
Looks like the type of questions haven't changed much since the old DCA SCPL theory exams of the 1950 - 1960's.
I well remember scratching my head around the complexity of gyro steering questions centred on the South Pole. After joining DCA in 1969 my office was next to Ted Steele the former wartime RAAF navigator who set the SCPL navigation and flight planning exams in those days. He came across as an embittered old man who hated pilots for some reason. I tackled him on the uselessness of South Pole gyro steering questions for the average GA charter pilot flying Chieftains to Tasmania which was SFA. He said the SCPL exams were first vetted and approved by Qantas as that was the standard demanded of Qantas recruits. That could be an urban myth but it came from the horse's mouth so to speak.
I don't know much about the Qantas academy but the SCPL exams back in the 1960's was only about an academic exercise, nothing was of any real value except maybe meteorology, which was just a more complicated version of the CPL met.
I'll always remember Question 1 in SCPL Nav was a Mer. Parts question , Co-ordinates of Sydney and Nadi given, come up with track and distance, or working backwards from landing weight limit, Mid zone weights etc, took ages in Flight Planning and was never going to be of any practical use in the time of INS and modern procedures.
Interesting enough 20 years later I had to do the British CAA ATPL subjects and they were even more irrelevant, the met was based around BOAC routes and the various phenomena they would encounter in Bristol Brabazons or the like.