Any point in selling ATPL study materials on Ebay?

[IO540]

I am just wondering who buys this stuff, given that you cannot sit the JAA exams without a signoff from an FTO, and the signoff comes for nearly £1000, which includes the study material.

[The500man]

Do you mean to say you don't intend to keep your ATPL study material and cherish it for ever and ever? Shocking! :)

[mad_jock]

Some folk seem to prefer other schools notes than the one they are going to.

I have known quite a few that have a set of Oxford and Bristol notes when they get stuck with one set they use the other.

I agree its a bit bizarre though. Although there is no small amount of folk that give up at that level and want to try and get some money back for the books.

[Genghis the Engineer]

When I was doing my CPL I found it really helpful if struggling with the way my school explained something, to occasionally use another school's notes. So, whilst I used CATS, I have some Oxford and other notes on the shelf.

And if you are of the view that once you've passed your licence you should never have to revisit any of that theoretical knowledge, why not flog it and get a few quid on eBay. Mind you, I wonder somewhat at that mentality - aviation is a knowledge based profession and keeping a few source texts on the shelf has always been essential to me.

G

[mad_jock]

you would be suprised.

Ace the technical pilots interview gets brought out when they go hunting for a job buts thats about it.

[Genghis the Engineer]

No, I wouldn't be surprised, but I still think they're wrong.

G

[IO540]

I have only 1300+hrs, not 13000 or 130000, but I can guarantee that if you separated out each of the ~ 50k factoids in the JAA IR paper study material (CAA approved FTO stuff), or each of the ~ 5k factoids in the JAA IR QB, and made two boxes, marked "relevant to flight, VFR/IFR, Europe or elsewhere" and "not relevant", a minimum of 90% would be in the latter.

Having now sat all 7 of the exams I am 100% confident of the relative proportions. It's nearly all garbage.

Speaking to old hands in this game, it's always been garbage, but maybe only 80% in the pre-JAA days.

It's a scandal, actually. Never in the history of human endeavour have so many clue-less pilots ended up in the RHS of a jet as today. When I read the latest AF447 instalment, it shocking not in that the pilots were such apparent FSX-drivers but in that they were still apparently just FSX drivers after a few k hours behind the Airbus FSX :)

If I wanted to dig out some clever formula, I use google.

[hazholmes]

I buy that stuff!

Not planning on enrolling for groundschool until the end of next year at the earliest, but wanted to do some background reading in the meantime.

Buy for xxx, read and digest, pass onto next in the queue for not much less than I paid, that's the plan.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Maybe depends upon what you do for a living IO540 - I have similar hours to you and refer to these notes fairly regularly.

On the other hand, my life includes teaching both flying and engineering (ATPL notes are bloody useful for some engineering material strangely enough), and I'm an born-and-bred boffin who is in love with knowledge and what I can do with it.

I certainly don't dispute on the other hand that a lot of the material is padding and cobblers, whilst at the same time there are things which really should be in there and aren't. I'd say the same of most other qualifications I've ever done - compared to for example my PGCert in teaching and learning that I had to do as a university lecturer, the ATPL is a paragon of directed and appropriate learning.

But I would be incredibly reluctant to lose any of these notes - the times I find I need to go and check something I did on one of my degrees, a martial arts course, even my microlight PPL groundschool are too common to risk it. Bookshelf space is cheap, and the internet isn't the answer to all problems.

I recently cribbed bits of the On-track flight instructors manual to create my own notes for a Jiu Jitsu instructors course I was running! Amazing the more I learn, the more it's all the same!

G

[Ph1l]

I was given the ATPL material by someone who did their ATPL and didnt want them anymore. I plan to do mine but at the moment funds and time dont allow, so for now its quite handy to have a look through some bits and get an idea at least of whats what. May not go for much but think of all that free space!

[bingofuel]

Ace the technical pilots interview gets brought out when they go hunting for a job buts thats about it.

If that is the book I think it is, it has so many mistakes you would fail an interview if you used it as a reference!

[IO540]

I thought about that but IMHO it is unlikely. The cost of duplicating the ring binders is only a few quid. The thick Jepp one is the unknown quantity; it might actually be quite expensive...

Apparently people who did the theory via CATS (Cranfield) buy the Jepp binder separately so for them the Ebay option is a viable one. With GTS, you cannot (AFAIK) sign up at all without ending up with all the material.

[echobeach]

Of all the costs of flying so far the most extraordinary so far has been the £80 odd I spent on my student jepp flight manual I bought for the ir ground school. The £80 for mint condition crp5 was money well spent.

I think I needed this manual for 5 questions and as based on mid 1990s plates will never use again. Will happily sell on eBay or even donate to prevent someone else having to buy this.

[IO540]

If you bought the Jepp manual for £80 then I am probably asking too much on Ebay, starting at £99 for the lot :)

Do you actually need the CRP slide rule for the IR? AFAICT one does not need it for the exams (notwithstanding appearances in the ground school material) and I can't see why it should be needed for the flying. Are you going to be dead reckoning off a wind corrected plog while flying around Bournemouth Class D with the window screens? :yuk: :E Surely one is tracking navaids the whole time?

I haven't started the flying bit yet so don't know what in the way of kneeboard paperwork the CAA examiners expect. Is a slide rule mandatory? I know somebody who did the whole CPL/IR and he reported very specific requirements on the kneeboard contents, right down to the way the holes in the approach plates were punched, and the order of all the bits of paper on the kneeboard. That might have been just the FTO requirement though...

If the slide rule is not mandatory, but a wind corrected plog is, then I can't see why one can't just use a laptop (Navbox) for the whole plan.

I actually learnt to use the little CR-5. As stated above, I never needed it for the JAA IR exams, but it can do wind calcs OK.

[mad_jock]

I didn't use the slide rule at all in either the CPL or IR it was all done with the clock face rule of thumb and max drift.

Some FTO's seem to be very anal about the flight paper work and others mine included (doesn't excist any more) wern't. I wouldn't have thought there is any issues with using computer generated Plogs although some places the school Plogs seem to be a revenue stream.

[echobeach]

I quite like knowing that I can use a Crp 5 simply as slide rules defeated me at school. The only reason I bought one was 1 the ground school insisted and 2 some of the high speed flight planning questions I found easier to use this for.

Don't expect it will appear much again except makes wind corrections easy.

My IR flight training is all glass cockpit garmin 1000 and far removed from the Cr5 as you so rightly point out