Studying ATPL after long break from flying

[Canicoll]

I’m enrolling in an ATPL theory course after 20 years since I did CPL.
Can anyone help me by sharing their ATPL hindsight? What CPL subjects do you think I should start reviewing first?

[kingRB]

If your IFR knowledge is brought back up to scratch I wouldn't bother looking at CPL material if your spare time is limited.

I used AFT text for ATPL study about 13 years after I passed CPL stuff and no problems getting through it at all.

[Canicoll]

kingRB, I sat IREX 2 years ago and didn’t have much of a problem with it although I did have a good instructor.
My reason for posting this thread is I really want to pass the course and after reading about how some guys have struggled with some of the subjects, I’m concerned that I’m signing up for something that may be beyond my abilities. So I thought if I did some study beforehand, I’d be giving myself a fighting chance.
Course starts in August so I don’t have a lot of time.

[kingRB]

It's been 8 odd years since I sat the ATPL subjects now, but I can't honestly think of anything in CPL level study that really was required precursor to getting through ATPL subjects.
Things like HUF is virtually identical, but that's a very straight forward subject matter to get up to speed on when you do ATPL study anyway. If you've smashed out IREX already, just be prepared to put the work into the ATPL study you'll be fine.

[Left 270]

You’ll get through, eventually... I agree with the above posts, I wouldn’t spend too much time if any on CPL revision unless you can’t remember which end of the aircraft is which. Flight planning and nav are the main concerns, and possibly systems, everything else is relatively straightforward.
Tick the box and move on with the subjects, very little useful information unfortunately and 2 years seems to go by surprisingly quick these days.
To give you an idea some/lots/most (?) self study for everything apart from flight planning so the level of difficulty in the subject matter itself isn’t actually that hard, learning how to pass the exam however is.
Be prepared to fail an exam, maybe more than once but dust yourself off and keep at it, it’s very easy to lose interest for a while and go backwards quickly.
Do one subject at a time and choose the order wisely, I’d suggest systems, nav, performance, flight planning and the others either beforehand or in between depending on what time commitment you can make.
Give yourself twice as long for planning as you think you’ll need and try not to be approaching the 2 year deadline.

Theres probably plenty more but you’ll work it out as you go along, just remember to stay committed and the first drink once they’re all done is worth it!

[machtuk]

Plenty of people have faced the same situation, a long break between drinks (studying) 10 years for me since I had picked up a calculator with such intent. I did the full time course wth Natahm at AFT 20 years ago now. Day one in class I thought, oh I think I don't belong here, too old too dumb, 4 weeks latter I had my ATPL (no flight test back then). Trust me if this old dummy can get thru anyone can! You would be surprised how the brain adapts, humans are good at adapting�� -:)
If you feel the need to pre study then brush up on terminology's, basic WX requirements, CAO 20.7.1B (Perf), basic IR requirements, there's lots of ATPL related stuff on the NET. From a 'get in to it' meaning what subject to do first do the easy ones first such as HF & Met, gets you in the study mode, get thru them and do a memory dump -:)

Good luck, look at the ATPL as a 100 page book, start at page 1, forget page 89 that's 88 pages away, worry about that when you get there -:)

[Canicoll]

Thanks for the insight guys, it really helps.
It even sounds like I could save a few thousand by self studying so I’ll put it off for now and get my MEIR instead.
That will at least get me set for my first and second job, then reevaluate next year some time.

Cheers guys