TU if you are looking for guidance on what to study then you are barking up the wrong tree.
As we all know, it's airmanship and leadership that will save you from crashing and not what's written in the books.
However, one must have a good 'working knowledge' of the books in order to know what might or might not be an issue. For instance if EGT says to you in interview the visibility for take off is 400m in fog, then you must consider the fact that its a captains only take off. If you miss it, then he is now gonna start to dig deeper into your knowledge and may well uncover more stuff you are unaware of. The point being, if you can impress in the first 10 minutes and not make an arse of yourself, then I'd lay money on the fact that you'd get an easy ride for the remainder of the interview. If he asks you to recite the stabilisation criteria and you fumble around for 10 minutes and come up with crap, then you will likely fail........simply put, a lot of this stuff should already be at a good F/O's finger tips.
A good keen F/O with a professional attitude will have been practicing being a Captain from the RHS for a very long time before his upgrade. He should have been trying to think like a skipper and come up with his own solutions to problems. If something arises he should assess it as if he was in the LHS, come up with an answer in his own mind, see what the capt did and look at the out come. He should be asking as many questions as possible coming up to his upgrade, he should be asking the line guys how to do the tech log, how to apply the MEL and continually ask himself 'what would I do now if x happened'. This is the attitude that will sail you briskly through your upgrade interview AND course with minimal fuss. On the other hand, I fly with some who I can spot a mile off will fail. They are the ones who, with just a couple of months to upgrade are happy to sit there reading the Gulf News, chatting up the crew and generally have 'sloping shoulders' not giving a sh1t.
These guys can fly! Their stick and rudder skills are probably better than mine in some respects, this is because 99% of their attention is given to the basic task of flying and NOTHING else. Being a skipper is 10% Flying skills and 90% management and problem solving/decision making. Like I said before being a good Captain is a frame of mind, not a taught skill. You can teach a monkey to fly, but it's unlikely you could teach it to manage effectively!
Good luck in any case
