PPL Exams!!

[Montoya]

Aaaaaa,I can't believe it.I passed my flight test about 2 weeks ago and all I had to do was pass the PPL exams.I managed to pass the Met,Airframes and engines and principles of flight,but I can't pass the airlaw exam,I've written it twice and failed twice even though I've studied my ass off for it.Tomorrows my last chance otherwise I got to go through my flight test again.Any one else had the same problem as me?Its just so frustrating!!!:ugh:

[Whirlygig]

I'm sorry for your situation but I don't think your flying school should have let you get to that stage.

In the UK, many schools will mandate that Air Law has to be passed before they allow first solo (although that's not a legal requirement). Most schools will also require that all exams have been passed before you do your final skills test so I am surprised that your school let you take the skills test with having passed so few exams.

If nothing else, I suggest you have a word with the Chief Instructor as I would think that some responsibility lies with them to hopefully give you some extra tuition (free!) to help you through this last exam.

Air Law is tough because it's boring. You just have to learn by rote. However, having some flying experience now, you should find it easier. I passed Air Law with the grand total of half an hour in my log book!

Cheers

Whirls

[jamie2004]

montoya i am in a similar position to you, i have failed my air law exam twice, i cant understand why i have as i have been revising for months and am well clued up on the subject!! it is soooo frustrating as i am ready to do my first solo. however i have found that becuase i have already failed twice i am worried that i will fail again, hence me having to go to gatwick to take it which i really dont want to happen...

[SparkyBoy]

I'm sorry for your situation but I don't think your flying school should have let you get to that stage.

In the UK, many schools will mandate that Air Law has to be passed before they allow first solo (although that's not a legal requirement).

That's certainly the case for me. My Flying school expect Air Law to be completed before your 10th hour or thereabouts. Makes sense really, why would you be allowed to fly solo when you don't know the law of the air.

It's just like driving without knowing your highway code! :eek:

Which study book are you using? The Trevor Thom books come with Q and A, I imagine if you pass that you will pass the exam.

[Eddie_Crane]

PPL Confuser.
Practise the question in the Confuser and you will pass all the PPL ground exams. Guaranteed.

[acuba 290]

also AFE book "Questions and Answers Simplifyer" helps a lot. Questions there are more like real ones in exams;)

[scubawasp]

Have a look in LASORs

An applicant may not take the skills test until ALL of the associated theoretical knowledge exams have been passed.

So am I missing something???

Edited to say, this been the JAA PPL

<<edit: I wondered when somebody would mention that. Quite correct.>>

[gcolyer]

My instructors drilled in to me the following:

RTFQ - read the f****** question

RTFA - read the f****** answer

I thought it wa very harsh, until i faile dmy air law a second time. My 3rd attempt i done exactly what they said a few times over. I was amazed to see how many questions seemed ambiguos, but after reading them over and the answers it started to become very clear on the actual answer.

I personaly thought it was a very sneaky paper. If you have the minimas, signals and maths for pressure settings in you head you should be good to go.

Just be very carefull on what you interperate in the question.

Good luck.

[Montoya]

Thanks for the replies guys.I find that they try and trick you with the way they ask questions and they will give two very similar answers and one thats a bit different,this sometimes makes you think its one of the similar ones,but it ends up being the other,very sneaky indeed!Some questions that are not in my book that I learned from(South African Air Law for the PPilot) seem to pop up every now and again,which doesn't help.I'm just going to try and take my time,read carefully and hope that I can get it right third time around.If I don't then I've got some serious work to do!

[jamie2004]

yeah best of luck montoya! i hope i get it 3rd time round as well!!!

[bencoulthard]

I'd just like to 2nd the PPL confuser, VERY good book

just curious, where are you learning?

Ben

[wsmempson]

You have my sympathy Montoya, as I too hated airlaw; to each question there seemed to be pretty much 4 similar answers. I bought the oxford aviation training dvd on airlaw and sat the mock exams over and over and over again until I knew the subject backwards.

I would strongly suggest you do this as having to go to Gatwick to take your airlaw will be very tedious.

I'm also slightly mystified as to how you've got so far without having passed this. At BAFC at Booker, you aren't allowed to solo without it and there is a large notice in the aircraft log room that says "candidates are not to be put forward for the GST UNTIL ALL relevant exams and requirements for hours have been filled". Common practice at most clubs, I think. On a pragmatic note, I suspect that if you went and bent one of the club's aircraft, I'd be worried that the insurers would decline cover, given that you haven't passed the relevant exams, and I don't think that I would want to be in that position. Time for a word with your CFI I reckon.

Good luck!

[splatt]

I'm also going through the exams. I have airlaw, about to write Human Factors.

I studied airlaw until I could answer the questions in the back of the thom books when my girlfriend read them out while we were driving places. I then got the confuser and to my surprise started scoring quite low. This was because I was skimming the questions and answering too quickly instead of really taking the time to understand exactly what they were asking. I also signed up to airquiz.com and did a few practice tests on there which caused me to score low yet again! I hit the books again out of fear heh. Eventually I was getting 85% just about every time on the airquiz site. I wanted 100% of course but it seemed out of my grasp so I wrote the exam at this stage of preparedness. I passed with 87% which was very close to what the mock exams were indicating I would.

A couple of the questions asked about things I had not seen before such as minimum equipment levels for certain flight conditions. I took a best guess but never did find out which ones I got wrong, my instructor said they don't go over the questions you get wrong or didnt understand (bad idea in my opinion - surely a contributor to unsafe flight!!). Still I passed and I assume the things that I hadn't seen before (in either confuser, thom, or airquiz) were just things I would have picked up had I studied from the AIP direct (which I actually did do to a point but that thing is MASSIVE and very difficult to determine exactly what applies to lil' ol' PPL students like me).

splatt

[rjt194]

I took a best guess but never did find out which ones I got wrong, my instructor said they don't go over the questions you get wrong or didnt understand (bad idea in my opinion - surely a contributor to unsafe flight!!).

Certainly if you fail they are not allowed to discuss individual questions, just say generally what areas you need to brush up on (e.g. air space classification, lights and signals). If you pass, however, they are allowed to discuss the specific questions you got wrong (and i believe are encouraged to). I just don't know off-hand where this is definitively set out. As you say, just because you passed doesn't mean you don't know something quite fundamental to flight safetly.

[Montoya]

Yay!!!I passed! I'm so happy. I took the written exam instead of the computer exam and found that there were less "surprise" questions.Thanks for the help guys and good luck to you jamie2004 and everyone else writting at the moment.

[splatt]

Well done Montoya :ok:

Only just noticed that your profile says your in Durbs in South Africa. Are you doing an SA licence? We are all wondering how you got to the skills test before you had written all the exams and this might explain it. I was in Ballito not so long ago actually, nice place! Bit humid for a capetonian like me, but then what am I saying, I now live in the UK!! Hehe.

All the best,

splatt

[bencoulthard]

Don't keep us all in suspenders, what score did you get?

[Montoya]

Yeah,here we just have to pass a pre-solo quiz before flying solo,which includes some law.We have the choice of doing our exams before or after the skills test.We are also advised to complete progress tests every 10 hrs flying time,however me being at school still,I didn't have time to study for them,so I left them until the end.
Yeah the humidity here is terrible in Summer,but now(winter) its perfect flying weather,sunny,cool,still.
Oh,my mark.I JUST made it,got 75%!

[wsmempson]

Anything over 75% will do (and arguably anything over 75% is wasted!)....well done!

[DERD]

Try LynAir, ad in Flyer. Great one to one help and examiner.

[DenhamPPL]

I'm pulling my hair out with the Air Law exam revision at this very moment.
I haven't done an exam for years so finding it quite difficult to retain all the information:ouch:

Did a mock exam on Tuesday at my flying school where I only got about 55% despite working hard revising the previous two days.

The paper was filled with really sneaky questions which annoyed me. Surely the exam is about testing your knowledge of the subject not phrasing questions badly to confuse you even more?!

I also signed up to AirQuiz.com and got my highest mark so far on Wednesday (82%) but I find that many of the old questions are repeated if you use their site regularily to test your knowledge. One very good thing about their site is that the questions all seem to be right up to date. I got one question about Rule 5 wrong because my study material was out of date! Airquiz had a link in their email to the relevent change.

I have the PPL confuser. From previous posts it looks to be a good study aid so will work with that over the next few days and hopefully sit the proper exam next week.

Andy

[gcolyer]

The paper was filled with really sneaky questions which annoyed me. Surely the exam is about testing your knowledge of the subject not phrasing questions badly to confuse you even more?!

Andy

I thought exaclty the same as this when i was doing airlaw. The exam is almost an english exam in it's self. As i said before read the question and read the answers. Don't try to read between the lines.

[DenhamPPL]

Understood:) Think I got 3 of the mock questions wrong because I had misread the question! I thought I was doing the right thing by only ticking those answers I was 99% sure were correct and going back to the more difficult ones later. Didn't work though lol.

I'll take more time over the mock next week - am just frustrated as I want to get on with the flying training!

Andy

[gcolyer]

I know what you mean.

I failed my MET exam twice on a 21 day course. That is all that was holding up my skills test. I got to day 21 and had to sit the exam at 07:00 that day, if I passed my skills test was 08:30, then leave to fly back to the UK at 11:30. Time really was not on my side.

I can't tell you how stressed i was the night beforeor the morning of the test.

My first two attemtps at the exam were really crap..i didnt get above 60%. My 3rd attempt i got 95% (I still struggle to keep a grip of MET).

[theresalwaysone]

When you read the question dont rush, cover up the answers, RTFQ has already been explained!
when you look at the answers select the answer which is most correct remember the answer you select may seem to be partially correct but the answer below it may be most correct-- read all the answers and eliminate the incorrect answers.

When you finish start the exam again--check every answer.

if you know the subject well you will not fail.

the world largest book, The Pilots book of Excuses

try the guy that taught Rchard Branson and Nigel Manselll and Jasper Carrot for a full time ground course he dosnt charge for exams or retakes.

I think web address is

www.madeinbirmingham.org/ppl.htm (http://www.madeinbirmingham.org/ppl.htm)

Good Luck

[IO540]

At least 90% of the JAA PPL exam syllabus is a load of cr*p. It needs to be learnt but you can safely forget it immediately upon passing the exam.

There is a big body of knowledge that is either required or is highly useful for real practical safe flying, but it isn't taught anywhere. This is true at the PPL (VFR) level, and is just as true at the IMCR/IR level. Loads and loads of stuff on flight planning, modern-day weather data gathering and interpretation, computer-aided flight planning, GPS/radio navigation, getting the best out of ATC, some quirks in foreign flight planning, engine management, etc. All this activity is within the appropriately licensed/rated pilot's privileges so legally he can just go and fly it, but he has never been told how.

It's fun to compare the JAA stuff with the FAA stuff. An FAA PPL (or PPL/IR) student, doing all this (training+flying) in the USA as nearly all of them do, does actually learn what he needs to know to practically fly.

Whereas the fresh UK/JAA PPL holder starts off by standing on the edge of a cliff, staring into a huge big unknown void.

[theresalwaysone]

Are you sure that shouldnt read, '90% of pilots are full of crap' when it comes to talking about exams.

The purpose of the exams are to test your knowledge of the laid down syllabus and your ability to learn and retain information, quite useful skills for a commander of an aircraft. The CAA, quite correctly, is charged with a legal resposibility to ensure that those who fly aircraft over the rest of the un-privellged population are safe and fit to do so.

Its true that a lot of the information wont be of much use on your first local flight after you get your licence but who is to say where and what you will be flying in 10 years time.

The 10% you are talking about can be passed on by a good instructor

You could also say the same about a degree in pure mathmatics-- what use is it but I would rather think along the lines of what use is Love Island on the TV or Big Brother.

Please dont compare the British to the USA-- we, thank God, have completely different standards brought about by a completely different race of unique people.
Because something is easier it dosnt mean its better-- if you look at some of the cavalier attitudes shown by US pilots in public transport accidents you will soon find the difference--Remeber the captain who said to the observer whats the difference between ducks and co-pilots (ducks can fly) and promptly a couple of mintues later went off the end of the runway-- or the US Challenger biz jet at Birmingham who didnt de-ice(as everyone else did) and stove in after take off killing everyone on board
The bridges accident where the captain moved the 737 closer to the aircraft in front at the hold to de ice it from the jet eflux !

The aircraft that flew into the Everglades on an ILS because all the crew were looking at a faulty light.

The rest of the world still views the UK as having the highest aviation standards and lets face it we are not much good at anything else so dont knock it!

[IO540]

Amen ..........