Depth of Knowledge for Meterology
 

Hi all, I'm sure you can help, one topic in my Meteorology book is full of symbols to define weather events. In online question banks, they do occur. It would seem a potential waste of my time and brain capacity to learn what they all mean, when I could simply look them up for reference in reality.

Do questions on the symbols occur in the actual question papers?

You need to be able to read and interpret TAF and METARS and recogise weather systems depicted on met charts. The purpose is to ensure that you have enough relevant knowledge to operate an aircraft safely not just to pass an exam.

Thanks for the reply, yes i can decode Metar and Taf without isssue. But there must be over 50 symbols, are they really necessary by memory?

what i did was to make up some cards, with the symbol on one side and the decode on the other, shake them them up in a box, and keep practicing, what the decode is for this symbol, and what the symbol is for this decode, youll have them cracked in no time.

Are they in the actual exams though?

Maybe not ... but they may occur in real life :E

In real life i can reference any I am unsure of when checking the maps.

My personal view is the content needs reviewing and what and why we learn updating.

you could always purchase the Air Pilots Manuals Met. exam prep. book, 5 mock exams to test your knowledge and a guide to whats in the exam.

Well regardless of your personal view it seems the authorities feel otherwise.....

FWIW in real life in aviation, even on the heavy metal, even with iPads and other gizmos you often don't have the time to "reference" charts, etc, there's a need to have ones own personal memory bank up to speed, so maybe you could think of memorising station circles/met charts as a useful mental exercise, if nothing else.

Agree.

Of all the knowledge I lost and gained since obtaining my PPL, Met was probably the highest net gain. In other words: I learned a lot more about Met than was ever examined at the PPL exam, since doing the exam.

I also hold a gliders pilot license, maybe that's a factor as well. It is very useful to be able to look at the proper Met charts and predict how thermic it's going to be tomorrow...

So, yes, learn the symbols instead of just expecting that you can reference them later on.

All very good advice, thankyou. Bit of a pain but I guess i have to get learning.

On an aside, what do you guys think about the theory format? It strikes me that it could do with being formatted by the CAA properly, and given a syllabus to be tested. Much like in a school. Having bought all the books it seems like 50% is waffle. With books covering 300 pages it seems a little ridiculous to try and learn it verbatim. When you come to use the online question banks they are not of the same format as the actual papers, which caught me by surprise (i scraped a pass) which leads me to learning the latter subjects more thoroughly. I guess what I'm driving at is, why does it seem such a disorganised mess? Why can't the CAA provide exams on the basis of

1) This is crucial to flight safety-Learn it and pass the exam
2) This is crucial to operating an aircraft in airspace-Learn it and pass the exam
3) The following material is supplementary and forms a deeper understanding of the subjects-learn at your leisure

As you can tell the lack of structure frustrates me.

jg


If you have a logical and tidy mind you'll find much to offend you in aviation. Much of it is a 'dogs breakfast' ! Anomalies and contradictions abound. Go with the flow. Study that which you need to pass your exams. Once you've passed, your time will be pre-occupied with gaining experience and becoming a better pilot.


Much of that with which you stuffed your mind, will never again be needed. Good luck.

A different and refreshing perspective. I thought it was just me. Thanks for the advice. For someone who has condensed their PPL into about 8 months but also works 80 Hours a week, I find it very time consuming as you can appreciate.

As above, just learn them I'm afraid. Use que cards if you have to and get someone to test you. You'll find that the symbols aren't just completely random, they are inherently designed to look somewhat like what they are depicting (to a point) and many are just variants (light, moderate, severe, of the same thing).

You will need to use the, in the future so you may as well learn them at this early stage so the are ingrained to use in the future.

A surprising amount gets beaten into the average brain. On my first jet it involved knowing all the start/stop/flight limits, a goodly amount of the normal and abnormal checklists, and a thorough knowledge of where to find stuff in the company Ops manual.

Current types: much is in the FMS. I can't remember the last time I properly calculated take off or landing performance from a manual, nowadays you enter the data either into the FMS or EFB for where you are and out pop the numbers. And you still have to remember where to find the right information in the Ops Manual. Much of the time, if you don't know, it's somewhere in one of the big, thick books in the docs stowage.

As for the OP. Take good time to learn the met stuff. Not only is it interesting it will keep you alive. If you think it's all a bit of a waste of time take up a different hobby. My boss and I were talking about decoding station circles and creating TAFs from them for the ATPL exams recently and felt bloody old when a couple do young co's asked us what we were on about as station circles are no longer in the syllabus for ATPL. The atmosphere we live in is fascinating to pilots, sailors, farmers and many others. Checking the TAFs and forms 214/215 every morning over breakfast and keeping an eye through the day as to how accurate they/you were is a good way to learn. I still do it, even on non flying days.

SND

OP, if you can't be bothered learning the theory and it all seems a bit too much then you really should reconsider if you want to pursue this.

A pilot friend of mine (the guy who got me started on all this) reckons that all this is in lieu of an actual intelligence test, which would no doubt be considered discriminatory. So instead you have to learn and remember zillions of largely useless bits and pieces. It's not THAT hard though it does sometimes seem kind of silly.

When I did my CPL the theory test was full of questions involving NDBs and wind drift - exercises in mental trigonometry, like you're going to be embarking on that when you're already distracted and disoriented flying in clag and turbulence. In the US at least, they were at the same time embarking on a program to decommission all the NDBs. (I think those questions have gone now). And guess how many on GPS...? You don't need me to tell you the answer.

My personal favourite is the three definitions of "night" and when they apply (in FAA land anyway).

I think that's it. Some of it I don't really know what or why I'm learning it. I'm simply ingesting the information and then parroting it out. Which to me is no indicator of intelligence or competence. I don't find the subjects particularly difficult (apart from air law), I simply want to prioritise my learning for the important things while trying to squeeze in 0-ATPL in two years whilst also working every hour God sends to pay for it. Not an easy task as you can imagine.

Thanks for your responses. Even though they are mixed and I still don't know if they will be in the exam questions lol.

So that includes the little symbols to denote Thunderstorms/Hail etc. As well as the abbreviations we need to learn in a Metar....See what i mean