I am going to have to strongly disagree with the original poster here.
Nathan's notes and his course are fantastic, I self studied all 7 of the ATPLs and passed all first time except flight planning.
I failed the first time by 1 mark, then passed the second albeit only just.
The questions and course material havent changed, and no one should have any doubt that the material you are learning is incorrect. As for all this 727 discussion well that's another topic...
For anyone reading this post my tips to passing this exam are simple;
1. Be prepared for exteremly difficult 1 and 2 markers where you will have to do the equivalent of 3-4 marks work. CASA will make you work extremely hard for 2 marks by for e.g. giving you a weight in the middle of a climb sector and then asking you to find GW once cruising, so you'll be using intermedaite climb calculations etc. all for just 2 marks)
2. DO NOT use any super sectors. The exam has been re-jigged and the answers are extremely tightly spaced. There is no margin to average any weather whatsoever unless we are talking 1 degree of temperature (with answers 50 kg apart even 30-40 kg over a 5 hour flight you are going to have to do it the hard way) (this was my undoing on my first attempt)
3. Read the syallabus as to exaclty how CASA round their numbers. Having studied an engineering degree actually put me in worse sted for the exam, if you do not round your numbers to the nearest 3 degrees or 5 degrees for example you are going to get the question wrong. Additionally for sector ETIs use at least 2 decimal places 30 seconds of fuel at 4500 kg/hr is 38 kg!!
4. Write the distances on ERC high charts for all the common routes and highlight the common routes.
5. Work extremely fast, a basic plan should take you 10-12 minutes tops
You have 50 marks and 180 minutes. That's 3 minutes 36 seconds per mark. Do the math.
Good luck to all sitting the exam.
AA out.