New PPL Examinations Paper Release

[justmaybe]

Just received the latest PPL (A) Examination Papers. On a cursory glance through they are definitely an improvement on the old set.

[Mach Jump]

I'm hoping that, given the need to reduce the number of questions, they have, at least, taken the opportunity to remove the daftest ones?


MJ:ok:

[BigEndBob]

Within two minutes of looking already spotted an error!
Does no one proof read these papers.

[B200Driver]

Are these papers still a set of 9 subjects? How many questions per subject (roughly)?

[keith williams]

The text below can be found in a thread concerning iphone APPS in the PPL Forum. It was originally provided by a member of the CAA PPL Working Group.

The October 2014 LAPL/PPL exam revision is in accordance with the WG's recommendations for a 43% reduction (and cr@p clearance) of the current exam questions, but there was no recommendation at this point in time for a reduction in the total number of exams. Which is understandable, due to the need to deliver a quick first achievement for the GAU and the avoidance of difficulty in administering a more complex revision.

For those who missed it, the thread also contains a link to a CAA IN on the subject.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/InformationNotice2014147.pdf

[BEagle]

If you're going to quote from my posts, keith williams, at least have the courtesy to credit them.

My post went on to say:

However, the next revision will include new questions, more relevant to the average LAPL/PPL pilot and designed to test fairly, not to trap. The Authority has confirmed that its target is for 120 questions in 6 exams - and an end to 'sittings' restrictions.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a 'member of CAA GAU'. Given that 3 sets of papers with 120 questions means 360 questions with either 3 or 4 multi-guess answers, I'm not sure whether the CAA can cope with such a level of work these days. Whether they intend to put the task out to tender, I do not know - but I intend to do some investigations once the far more important work on the RF-to-ATO AltMoC has been completed.

[B61]

It's all the same old questions as before, just less of them. AL, AGK and Met have 16 questions each, the rest 12.

The Nav exam is just the same dogs dinner of questions culled from the CPL and ATPL question bank as was introduced last year.

As beegle says, they don't seem to have anyone who can write any new questions at the CAA.

And why anyone thinks they deserve a pat on the head for reducing the number of exams for 9 to 6 is just a mystery ( if it ever happens, of course).

3 would be better, but with all the hot air that has been generated for no result, it is probably more likely that you could catch a bus to the moon than for this to happen.

I wonder how many prospective PPLs decide to go and play golf instead when they learn there are 9 written exams to do ?

[Whopity]

With the current CAA concern over Infringements, one has to question the wisdom of reducing the Navigation exam to a worthless entity. The naive belief that the Examiner will check all the missing items is simply pie in the sky; so long as the candidate can produce a series of headings and times, how they acheive this is of little consequence, they could simply traspose it from a tablet. EASA places no specific distances on the navigation section and GM1.FCL1015 recommends the following times:(c) When planning the duration of a test, check or assessment of competence, the following values may be used as guidance:

(2) 90 minutes for LAPL(A) or (H), PPL and CPL, including navigation section;so how is the Examiner supposed to check anything?

The latest papers seem to be just more of the same, some questions obscured by waffle and what relevance is an aircraft with an 80 Kts stalling speed to an ab-initio PPL student?

In complete contrast, a brief look at the FAA questions reveals Sanity, Simplicity and Relevance (SSR). The BMAA has always produced the Microlight question bank, relevant to their purpose, and then printed by the CAA. Maybe there is a lesson here. One instructor commented yesterday, I no longer know how to justify all the the stuff I now need to teach to pass the exam!

[Treadstone1]

Hi

This is directed to the lads and lasses who have received their new papers. Are you involved with an ATO?

Interest Only

:ok:

[Whopity]

I know of ATOs and RFs that have received their papers. In reality, there are still very few PPL ATOs.

[mad_jock]

There are already scans of them on pirate bay se.

[BEagle]

If people continue to scan and cheat in such a way, mad_jock, it is quite possible that LAPL/PPL exams might, in the future, need to be taken unseen only at 'approved locations'. As commercial exams once were.

There are 2 choices - cheat and screw it up for everyone else, or don't cheat and continue under present arrangements.

[Mach Jump]

There are 2 choices - cheat and screw it up for everyone else, or don't cheat and continue under present arrangements.

Problem is, BEagle, that the present system of having sets of Exam Papers lying around in drawers all over the country is never going to be secure, and in the brave new world of instantaneous mass communication, it only takes one person to cheat, and the contents of the Exams are available to the whole planet.

The sooner we adopt an FAA style system of secure, computer based, Exams, with a large, published bank of questions, the better.

For the price of a copy of the FAA questions from ASA we could even have a ready made question bank, easily adapted, where necessary, to suit European rules/practices.;)


MJ:ok:

[Mickey Kaye]

"need to be taken unseen only at 'approved locations'. As commercial exams once were."

But even then the commercial question bank is available.

So perhaps the CAA should come up with a method of testing that's more suitable to the 21st century.

How about Keith Williams previous suggestions or dare I say it why not do it like the FAA do.

And at the same time look at the content.................,,

[BEagle]

'Doing it the way the FAA' do, perhaps. Which includes a fairly demanding oral exam, which might perhaps weed out the cheats....

[justmaybe]

We have gone through a plethora of, quite frankly, nonsense concerning the knowledge that is appropriate for, and required of private pilots. Both JAA and EASA and have imposed requirements that have no vocational or academic validity, and erstwhile arguments have been proffered, by amongst other AOPA, that have essentially had us going around in circles so that we end up back to where we were in the 1980s. The same can be said of the professional examinations; trained chimps could pass them, and in the world of academia pass marks of 85-90% are unheard of. MJ mentions this stuff being available on the net - no surprise there. Beagle alludes to the FAA Oral; If you have been through that you know you need to, and know your stuff. Focusing just now on the PPL exams, there is a huge amount of talent and guts on here to make a difference. If the exams lack credibility, don't be surprised if they are treated accordingly and the pass rate might be very high!!

[BigGrecian]

fairly demanding oral exam,

There are no demanding oral exams left that I know of.

The FAA examiners who used to conduct these put themselves out of business and lowered their standard for commercial reasons as they wouldn't get any business as everyone chose the easy examiners.

Most FAA orals last less than 10-15 minutes now with the same questions asked to every candidate.

If you think the FAA system is better you clearly up to date with the current reality of the system in use.

[mad_jock]

The caa needs to enter the real world with its procedures.

Its getting there with commercial but still some of the form filling rubbish procedures are farcical if they think we actually do it the way they think we do it.

There have obviously bought some expensive adobe software to try and lock forms down so you have to print and sign them then scan them back in etc.

It takes 10 seconds to get round this security feature.

As long as they are sending out paper copys of exams it will never be secure. And there will be a small number out there that will cheat.

They seem hell bent though not using a commercial proffessional exam provider which the likes of microsoft and others use.

The exams are unproffessionally set and of poor quality and it could be argued not fit for use.

I don't have a clue what the new ones are like I didn't even bother to pull the torent.

I suspect i wouldn't be able to pass them anyway.

[fwjc]

Hehe mj love your rants! Especially cos they're often true.

The FAA method seems to be much more appropriate and relevant. It's good that the latest release are somewhat of an improvement, but the fundamental issues are still there.

[keith williams]

There are 2 choices - cheat and screw it up for everyone else, or don't cheat and continue under present arrangements.

You have overlooked a third choice.......Use a system that makes cheating impossible, or at least very much more difficult.

But this currently appears to be unthinkable to the minds of the CAA (and AOPA apparently).

[mad_jock]

And lets face it the cheaters which must include current instructors for them to get out so quickly don't really care about screwing it up for everyone else.

[BigGrecian]

I don't get why they don't watermark the papers with each ATO name or who the papers are issued to. They are obviously printing them on an individual basis rather than mass producing so that'd be a very simple first step to prevent them leaking.

Those whose papers appear in the public domain would be ineligible to receive papers in the future.

Also, the CAA has a vehicle for the exam delivery it wouldn't take much for them to deliver E-PPL exams.
In fact some countries get very confused when they get an application with the PPL exams signed off by a GR as most other countries the PPL exams are only administered centrally by the CA.

[mad_jock]

2 min job to remove water mark.

There is things out there that giggle with the wording and letter spacing to let you know where things are from but i would have thought there are to many copys to do it with.

As this issue has been active all the time i have been in aviation, I suspect its just an outright refusal by the caa to admit its not fit for use. And there arn't huge numbers of ppl's falling out of the skys. So apart from the sheer bad taste that cheating gives it doesn't seem to be having an effect on flight safety.

Back in 2k you could get a copy of the papers in the barras for 3 quid and the previous time i had seen them they came with a hooky copy of ms simulator in the early 90's, so its hardly a new problem.

[Whopity]

When the PPL Confuser first appeard it was a direct copy of the actual exam questions; the author actually obtained tacit approval from CAAto publish it; the person involved had never seen the PPL exams and didn't recognise the questions!

As for watermarking, very simple to remove, the CAA can't even afford maps, so I doubt they would move away from batch printing.

The answer is clear, publish the questions, that way the quality can be monitored and if prospective pilots learn what they need to know surely that is better than answering meaningless questions of dubious quality.

[B61]

They could at least eliminate the byte-sized learning for each exam (followed by instant dumping of what has been learned) by setting just one exam, split into sections.

It does not even have to be 120 questions. Can just be 100, as with the PPAER exam in Canada.

Followed by an oral exam, 90 minutes duration.

This could be taken with any current ground examiner.

It would be best if each examiner was given access to an online portal. They could then login so the student could do the exam.

They already have this with ASPEQ, so it's not as if the software does not exist.

The overhead of printing out many exam papers is cumbersome and insecure. As a method it has really reached the end of the line.

[sapperkenno]

Most FAA orals last less than 10-15 minutes now with the same questions asked to every candidate.

If you think the FAA system is better you clearly up to date with the current reality of the system in use.

Don't talk sh1te. Mine ranged from 3.5 - 6 hours each for CPL/IR/CFI/II, and I know others in more recent times which are still taking a lot longer than 10-15 minutes. I did make a point of going to a decent outfit though, and not somewhere I knew I could have crap piloting skills and lack of knowledge and scrape through, simply by paying money - like most of the places in Europe that teach button-pushing airline crews, and not single pilot operating skills.

What I will say, is that if you learn at a flight school with its own DPE's, then it is likely the instructors there will know what/how the DPE's like to test, and enure the student is up to scratch. For example, they know that a particular DPE likes to discuss altimetry and density altitudes etc, so they ensure the student is up to speed on this particular subject. Obviously, the student must be able to answer any questions on the day, but if the DPE tests thoroughly, with relevant questions, and the students have a good grasp of these "more likely to be tested" aspects, then it's no bad thing. I don't think it's cheating either.

Obviously, it can be abused by the folks BigGrecian talks about, but I would suggest that such abuse is not as mainstream as he suggests.

[BigGrecian]

but if the DPE tests thoroughly

The examining standard implemented by the Orlando FSDO DPE's is comical from my experience.

I would agree on the CFI because that is a specific authorisation which not all DPEs have.

The rest of the DPEs you can just pick those which don't bother with half of the stuff as long as you pay them. They meet at 8 do paperwork for half an hour because their all so old they don't know how to use IACRA, then they talk for 15-20 minutes and fly at 9. That's the timetable a lot of schools even use in their scheduling. It's comical. The idea behind it is great but there is absolutely zero practical oversight from the FAA other than their annual/semi-annual check ride.

[Mickey Kaye]

Has everyone received the revised papers yet?

[S-Works]

Nope. Not heard a thing about them.

[Treadstone1]

Yes had them for over a week.

[BigGrecian]

Yes had them for around 10 days.

[FirstOfficer]

First impressions? Are they a great improvement since last revision?

[Whopity]

The same questions, just less of them!

[BEagle]

However, as much of the utter dross which could be deleted in the time available was $hitcanned, I gather. But some of the 'least worst' had to go back in as otherwise it would have been impossible to generate 3 x 120 questions before the deadline to which they were working.

[BigEndBob]

I believe the process was outsourced, so why the rush?

[mad_jock]

Can you guys that are in the system and know the right Deptment to speak to please post who people should be contacting to find out where their papers are.

I have had three requests now for the pirate bay link for the papers from people reporting to be schools requiring them. And/or to just email them copy's

As you might understand I am not getting involved with that sort of nonsense. I haven't downloaded them or looked at them and certainly don't want to be involved in distributing links to illegal copy's.

[BigGrecian]

[email protected]

[Mickey Kaye]

Pulled straight from the General Aviation Red Tape Challenge Panel report: government response

The new syllabi will be notified to EASA as
an Alternative Means of Compliance with full implementation in the latter
half of 2015. This will be completed in conjunction with the introduction
of on-line PPL exams.

So it would look like they are on there way.

[S-Works]

Be interesting to see how online papers are administered and paid. PPL exams are a good extra income for us.......

[mad_jock]

Well i do feel that you will loose out bose but in all honesty its better if the schools have absouletly as little to do with the theory exams and results as possible. I know its a big brush but I have never seen them conducted as per the regs in any school i have been in. And the documentation of the results has been universally poor as well.

If they do turn cyber that is a huge blackmail stick which is used by some schools on students gone.