If you drop me a PM I'll bring you up to speed with the question distribution and what you can actually expect.
The problem with the exams (in general) is the filtration of questions down to an appropriate level.
The algorithms which select the questions only filter down to the second 'Topic' level of the four level (Subject - Topic - Paragraph - Sub-Paragraph) Learning Objective code, which can result in disproportionate allocation of questions into one of the many third 'Paragraph' levels within the second 'Topic' level. It is extremely rare that an exam will be badly biased towards one area but it has been reported in the past that a General Navigation exam had 7-8 out of the 12 questions on Basic Navigation (which has 5 'Paragraphs') being on Time, which only leaves 4-5 questions for the four other 'Paragraphs'.
As I said, this rarely happens and more often than note the spread of questions is quite even across most Paragraphs - my own examination creation software does this very well even though the parameters are the same as the official one - but nevertheless we do see occasional exams skewed towards one Paragraph.
What is does create though is a serious lack of consistency across examinations from one month to the next - this means that one group of students one month could face a far more difficult examination than the group of students the following month. In reality, you could have a class of super switched-on students failing the exam one month and a class of poor students passing the following month, with nothing whatsoever to differentiate between the complexity of the two exams. This demonstrates that the examinations are not fit for purpose and that it is simply a matter of the 'luck-of-the-draw'.
The problem is exacerbated by an appallingly poor question bank which, in most subjects, is populated with one-off questions dotted here and there. If you can create one question on plotting a position line on a Lamberts Chart from a radio bearing, why can't you produce twenty questions - it's only a simple case of spending a couple of hours changing the numbers. The management of the question banks has been at best shockingly poor and at worst non-existent.
The new UK electronic exams are purportedly going to address these problems by filtering questions down to a far greater level - this is not difficult to do and it surprises me that this was not done years ago............oops, sorry, that would require an element of organisation and logical thought, something seriously lacking in the JAA and non-existent in EASA!! Additionally, the CAA are (allegedly) introducing a far greater level of question quality control - I remain to be convinced!!!
Oh, joy!
