just had the 'you passed stage 1 email'
many thank to all the reassuring tips on this thread, a couple of points that i would like to re-affirm for other is
1/ motivation paper, for me this focusses alot on the technicalities rather than the process....e.g. what does xxxx stand for, so dont get caught out on this, i thought i had which really annoyed me. also on the airplanes if you spend a few mins working out what they can ask you then these are not a problem
2/ cubes, whatever you do dont think that its easy after after the first 14 cubes (like i did), there is a reason people get to about 32-35, its because it gets silly hard, those who finish this paper deserve alot of credit. Also practice non standard cube layouts, i got to 33, spent the last 3-4 mins struggling on 33-35, dont guess i dont think it really helps.
3/ diagramming, i thought this was fairly easy, i think its about spotting the key bits of information and not going through each sequence step by step, i reckon if you go through each one step by step you will run out of time.
4/ sdt, if you cant do this then you probably should not really be there, finished it in about 10 mins and checked it through, only thing to note is that i think the compass degrees for aviation go the other way (clockwise starting at north) compared to the standard maths (counter clockwise, start at east)...dropped a few questions on this as i only looked at it afterwards when looking at this sim, last questions was fairly odd as well, makes you think!
ATC-SIM: a web-based air traffic control simulator
For anyone wandering, ABC Air traffic by Graham Duke was not useful at all in answering any questions, it was very useful in giving me some confidence in the subject though, most of the information in the first 50 pages is contained within the test document and its another style of writing which really cant hurt, for £8? its worth it if your actually wanting to do this career.
good luck to everyone