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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nope. Not heard a thing about them.

Yes had them for over a week.

Yes had them for around 10 days.

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

The same questions, just less of them!

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.

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

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.

Online Exams on there way?
 

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

So it would look like they are on there way.

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

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.