I finally got to meet the great legend himself, Nathan Higgins. With his help just recently, I was able to pass Flight Planning first crack! 80% and finished with an hour to spare
I found that there's only one way to pass this bugger, and that's to just do the work, the good ol' PPPPPP (Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance) comes to mind. No short cuts here I found.
My pointers to pass. Get a good picture in your head on what the subject is all about. I found with this, I was easily able to jump from one question to another with minimal fuss. Also, KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!
For the flight plans, I broke it down into approx 5 box's, the first was getting, tracks: dont do the super sectors, too much work and worry. If you get your groundspeed out by more than 2-3kts, it can create havok at the end! Break it down, have a look at the wind sections then plan to a waypoint that is closest to it. If there's only one wind (like: YSSY-YBBN), then bonus, just plan YSSY-TOPC-TOPD-YBBN-APPRoach.
next distances, planned heights, ISA dev, wind (as per track notes above, and everyone elses, ie, 2/3's climb and 1/2 descent), TAS, Wind Comp and final GS. I found that all these in the above order just bounced off one another.
2nd box in a forward plan: figure out the climb figures - bang, done!
3rd box: figure out the descent figures - bang done!
4th box: do the rest of the cruise - bang, done!
5th box: calculate the fuel then add reserves.
Backward plans: 1st Box, 3rd, 2nd, 4th, 5th.
CP's, work out the CP first, then same as forward plan.
PNR's, pick one, then work towards it like the forward plan. Be careful to get the right amount of flight fuel. Then figure out how far you've got to move (if any) to the correct PNR using SGR's..
CPDP's are a give away 5 marks, pray for these buggers!!
Also got one 4 mark Payload question, so lucky!
Safe Planning,
go_soaring! instead