Originally Posted by IO540
I am just working through the 7 IR exams and have never seen so much bull***t in my life. The relevance to flying is much less than 5%, where the material was once relevant it is obsolete by at least a decade, and the questions are often ambiguously phrased (poor use of English). A lot of the answers are simply wrong, or so highly type- or context-dependent they are meaningless. I don't understand how, 10+ years after JAA came in, this appalling situation has been allowed to continue.
Ah, but all of this is
very important and fully relevant 
I believe anyone's flight safety is considerably higher, if he/she knows the exact year and place each of ICAO annexes was accepted. And draining the fuel tanks before every flight isn't the safest possible method, you have to do it only before first day of flight, to be on the safe side, of course. And
the most accurate method of determining aircraft's positions is DME/DME, god forbid GPS - it's satan's work. Also, frequency 135.875 is spelled as "one three five decimal eight seven" - who cares about the last number, you don't see it on your state-of-the art avionics anyway. To be honest, you just have to know all the performance factors by heart, since this could one day save your life - you know, paper copies are so expensive and it is cheaper for an operator to have its crew learn manuals and tables by heart than to print some copies and put it on board the aircraft. Not to mention, that if you put 20 kg in front and 20 kg in back of your present CG, it is absolutely
CRITICAL to know that the CG moves for 2 mm or so - being 100% precise is all flying is about. But when calculation navigation data, you have to round out data at every step and apply some of that engineering talent of yours so the end result, such as WCA or ground speed isn't fudged by your calculator's inability to calculate trigonometry correctly.
Saracsm off now...
IO540, I agree with everything you pointed out, but the truth is - how can we change it? I don't think EASA actually cares much about the CQB, since most of the questions are created in a way to deceive and I believe the intention of JAA was to fail as many as candidates as they could and create some sort of selection to eliminate the weakest. But then came the internet and CQB (or copies of it, since as far as I know EASA didn't approve any of databases one can purchase on the internet as the official database) were made public and most people now "study" (I can't really describe this as studying), by clicking on the questions again and again until they have memorized the correct questions in their heads. Sadly, it's not just aviation that is going this way...
