I also never found anybody selling the computer revision ground school material - unless this is 100% identical to the ATPL version, but then I never found anybody whose product defined which 7 out of 14 to use.
There are 7 IR exams. They are seperate from the 14 ATPL exams. There is not a simple mapping of "you do these 7 ATPL exams for the IR". The IR syllabus is a subset of the ATPL syllabus
in totality but that syllabus is clustered into 7 exam papers which map in different ways to the ATPL. For example (and take this as illustrative, I am doing it from memory)
...some exams are identical to the ATPL equivalents (HPL and IFR comms, I think)
...some exams are a subset of the ATPL equivalent. For example, the IR MET exam and syllabus is a simple subset of the ATPL MET exam and syllabus with about 90% of the ATPL content, but excluding various bits on global weather patterns etc
...the rest of the IR exams are a combination of parts of the ATPL syllabus bundled into IR exams. For example, the ATPL has an Air Law exam and an Operating Procedures exam. The IR has a single Air Law and Operating Procedures exam. It includes a subset of the ATPL syllabus for both these. It is a minor nusiance during the CATS course that you have to flick from the ATPL manuals to the paper that tells you which bits are relevant to the IR. However, the Question Banks are good - they are specific to each IR paper without you having to worry about any of this ATPL subsetting.
I also heard, several years ago, that all jet-specific questions were removed from the ATPL syllabus, if one was doing just the PPL/IR. Is this true? If true then the exams cannot possibly be the same.
See above. The exams have never been the same. They do not include any jet-specific content. You can see the "Learning Objectives" for each paper here:
JAA - Licensing: Learning Objectives IR (A)
(these are probably the post-amended JAA standard, not the current CAA one)
too much hassle with window screens (which
AFAIK nobody has done for the TB20GT) and too much gold plating.
There is a detailed write-up here of a PPL/IR Europe members experience doing an FAA to JAA IR conversion on a private N-reg TB20 here:
PPL/IR Europe - Getting a JAA/IR - Personal Practical Experience
There is also a detailed write-up of the TK exams here:
PPL/IR Europe - JAA IR Written Exams: Much easier than you think
I also never found anybody selling the computer revision ground school material
The market is tiny - why would anyone sell it? Every candidate has to go to an approved school, so you sign up for a course, and they sell you the materials - online or paper. If you want to get a sense of the question bank, a number of the ATPL question bank providers will sell you the IR QB - google it.
Classroom attendance should not be mandatory for a conversion IR but I think these firms both offer something like 1 day's heavy classroom revision, just before the exam
It's not mandatory, but it is at the schools' discretion. I would imagine that they would not require completion of the coursework and classroom attendance if you convinced them in good faith you were able to self-study in the spirit required of the JAA/EASA exam process (.....eg. not an intention to try the exams without studying to see which you pass!).
I was looking .....a location in Spain which someone recommended as supporting SE IR training
Of course it was (quite rightly) possible under the JAA to do this sort of thing. I believe there was a bit of greyness one needed to be careful of about which bits of the process were done where, but plenty pilots with UK JAA licences got IRs added to them on the basis of completing training and the test in Spain. The JAA has since evaporated, so I would just be cautious that the process you choose ticks the right boxes for the CAA - it's really down to their discretion now whether to and how to accept overseas training and testing. One advantage of EASA is that these rules about cross-border training and testing will be clearer and more consistent.
brgds
421C