The hardest thing in the ATPL's is the volume, and sifting through what you really
need to know as opposed to what is
nice to know. Certain things very rarely get tested, but as it is in the syllabus, it has to be covered in the notes.
I started doing it self study, and you try to learn everything because you don't know what is tested and what isn't, but I switched to Residential as it was taking me far too long to self srudy, and also on a residential, they skip over the stuff you don't need to know, and concentrate on stuff you do. I would recommend anyone who can afford time/money to do residential rather than self study - especially if you are not very mathematically minded other wise, like I did you will struggle doing it alone, then got p#d off with it and then it will take you longer. I had self study for 18 months and only got half way through mod 1. Residential, I was all complete in 8 months !!.
Gen Nav - I failed the first time by 1 question
Didn't even understand the subject then either !!. Spent the next month going through it at home by myself, and then really got to understand it, and got 95% at the 2nd attempt which was the highest out of the whole class, and I'm no brain box - I have a memory like seive !!. There are alot of formula's to remember but they are very similar, so you have to remember to use the right one to get the right answer but once you have cracked this, your half way there - te rest is CRP-5.
Met is pretty straight forward, although by no means easy but it's the one subject you WILL use every single day in your career, so best to try and understand it. I found that remembering the frontal diagram and the ELR/SALR/DALR diagrams and then sketching them down quickly on the rough paper once the examiner says "go" can answer almost 50% of the questions just from those 2 little things !!.
PofF is pretty tough to understand at first, but once you understand the lift/drag formula then the rest kind of falls into place.
Air Law is boring, same with Ops. Just lots of facts and figures to remember.
Mass and Balance - Easy - only about 3 things to remember and alot of them are in the book you get in the exam anyway
Instruments, again some technical bits, but if you sift through all the rubbish, there isn't a whole heap to remember.
AF/S - fairly straight forward although the electrics part is pretty complicated.
Radio Nav - boring, not too much to remember.
Flight Planning - Pretty easy. Just remember the ETP/PSR formula's, and almost all the rest is in your Jepp !!.
Performance can be tricky, not too difficult but is quite technical and alot of terms and formulas are very similar leading to confusion
Comms - waste of time and money. Enough said.
Once they are all over you will wonder what it was you worried about. They really are not as hard as you build them up to be in your mind.
