What are we paying for?
Why do it if it's not fun?
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 4,782
Likes: 12
From: Bournemouth
Have to admit that I've been watching weather forecasts on tv for years, and when the forecaster has spoken of "drizzle" I've always known what they meant without needing it to be defined in terms of the size of the droplets in mm.....
Just the same as I've been reading maps for years (mainly road maps at first, aviation charts later on) without knowing what a Lamberts Connical Projection is. In fact, I can barely remember what it is now - I'd have to get my text books out to be certain of remembering correctly - but I use aviation charts every day at work and haven't managed to get lost yet.
The real proof that much of the syllabus is not needed is to look at the FAA and other foreign ATP holders who have thousands of hours flying all kinds of heavy metal perfectly safely and efficiently, but have never come across a large portion of the stuff that they need to learn to convert their license to JAR.
But, that aside, the exams have to be passed. And that means the subjects need to be learnt. To suggest that it's possible to learn the A,B,C answers to the entire question bank is, I'm afraid, ludicrous.
There are subjects such as Air Law which can only really be learnt by studying feedback questions. That is because, by its very nature, it is a subject which consists of lots of independant facts to be commited to memory. But for most subjects, the only way of passing is to have at least a reasonable understanding of the subject, and then to use the feedback questions to help understand the format of the questions they are likely to ask you and any common tricks and nasties, so that the questions in the exams don't come as a complete surprise.
FFF
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Just the same as I've been reading maps for years (mainly road maps at first, aviation charts later on) without knowing what a Lamberts Connical Projection is. In fact, I can barely remember what it is now - I'd have to get my text books out to be certain of remembering correctly - but I use aviation charts every day at work and haven't managed to get lost yet.
The real proof that much of the syllabus is not needed is to look at the FAA and other foreign ATP holders who have thousands of hours flying all kinds of heavy metal perfectly safely and efficiently, but have never come across a large portion of the stuff that they need to learn to convert their license to JAR.
But, that aside, the exams have to be passed. And that means the subjects need to be learnt. To suggest that it's possible to learn the A,B,C answers to the entire question bank is, I'm afraid, ludicrous.
There are subjects such as Air Law which can only really be learnt by studying feedback questions. That is because, by its very nature, it is a subject which consists of lots of independant facts to be commited to memory. But for most subjects, the only way of passing is to have at least a reasonable understanding of the subject, and then to use the feedback questions to help understand the format of the questions they are likely to ask you and any common tricks and nasties, so that the questions in the exams don't come as a complete surprise.
FFF
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Guest
Posts: n/a
Let's not get hung up on the mm issue. VFE said size doesn't matter!
Well, what do I know? Maybe I am over egging it, I dunno. Regardless, I quite like the fact that I have at least a grounding on a broad range of flying related subjects. I can easily forgive the odd strange question.
Well, what do I know? Maybe I am over egging it, I dunno. Regardless, I quite like the fact that I have at least a grounding on a broad range of flying related subjects. I can easily forgive the odd strange question.
