"Maybe in what you fly. But even working for a UK company I found alot of it useful. "
Even Canadian companies. Flying around N Alberta, I use convergency all the time as part of my mental arithmetic.
As far as the syllabus goes - yes, a lot of it is stuff that really should be on a Flight Engineer's exam. The rest of it you will have to know at some stage - or at least you will know it by the time you retire! EASA likes you to know it up front, as you will have a licence that takes you into many countries. I don't have a real problem with that - as a TRE, do I ignore part of the check ride because I know the candidate doesn't do that in his job? No, because my signature entitles that candidate to be a professional pilot - I don't know where they will end up.
And anyhow - flat knowledge is worth 30% of problem solving time in an emergency. You can't get enough of it.
But the sad truth is that you cannot pass the exams on knowledge alone. You have to use the databases to practice using questions that are riddled with bad English, bad punctuation, misspellings, multiple correct answers, multiple wrong answers, some in the middle - in short, it's a major SNAFU and an international joke, for which the perpetrators should hang their collective heads in shame. Here is an example:
"ESSENTIAL TRAFFIC" is that controlled flight to which the provision of separation by ATC is applicable, but which, in relation to a particular controlled flight is not separated therefore by the appropriate separation minima. Whenever separation minima is not applied. The following flights are considered essential traffic one to each other."
This is a quote about a recent navigation exam from a very experienced military pilot from the USA undergoing a conversion.
"For the Nav I found that a number of questions did not offer the actual solution. I was using a Jep CR-3 computer which gives slightly different answers than theirs. I then did a spot check on a number of their problems solving them by trig. The trig is really only GCSE level (sin/cos/tan, and then the law of sines). What dumbfounded me was NONE of their answers were correct. I am at a complete loss of what to do with this. All the wind problems were Euclidian so really quite simple. Also, I don't use the 60-1 small angle approx since I had a calculator (and the CR3 does trig nicely) and they are very quick. Even with these simple ones, they did not have the exact answers, with the correct answers almost smack in between two others.
For my next attempt I am at a loss for what to do. I the correct answers is not correct, then what kind of arbitrary, just happen to be the answer they found are they looking for? To they understand that in this simple math there is exactly one answer? Do they understand the difference between accuracy and precision? These too have tight definitions, but that seems to be lost on them. They seem to be happy with precision being that they all get around the same wrong answer, but either don't understand the simple math or don't care how to get accuracy. Unless they are going to specify the exact model of flight computer, to include the date of manufacturing since tolerances change, how can they do this? Perhaps I should send them ISO 5725."
No amount of knowledge will get you through the exams with situations like the above.
Last edited by paco; 22nd Apr 2013 at 05:37.