Best way to tackle JAA exams

[GuilhasXXI]

Hi everybody, I´m about to start preparing for my first set of exams but I´m not sure which ones to take first. I would like to hear about anyone´s experience on the subject and what exams you took first and/or why. Thanks !

[RichardH]

Surely your course provider has given you a recommended plan of action & learning materials which will partially dictate the way you have to go. I can't think of any provider that does it exactly the same way, some are 2 and others are 3 modules. Their brush-ups, which you must attend, will also run a similar manner and doing anything different isn't going to help you. This is the procedure in the UK but I see you are in sunny Portugal.

That said my personal view is Met should be one of the first as it underpins nearly everything in aviation. You need to know about P of F to understand performance, similar with flight planning you should know about both general and radio navigation. Ops is a dumping ground for everything else but includes quite a bit of systems so suggest do last. Of course you can do things differently but you might find you are duplicating effort.

[paco]

If it helps we do it this way:

Human Performance
POF
AGK
Instruments

Law
Ops
Radio nav
Met
Comms

Nav gen
Flight Planning
M & B
Performance

The grouping allows for the most crossover of questions between subjects, and building up of knowledge as you go along. Flight planning requires knowledge of Met and law beforehand (it says so in the LOs)

Richard is right is saying that a lot of Met underpins everything else, but HPL includes a little as well and it's probably the one subject that most people know something abotu anyway, so it's an easy start.

Good Luck

Phil

[GuilhasXXI]

Thank you very much for both your reply´s, I´ve been told I should take easy and hard subjects, and not only 1 sitting of either easy or hard subjects. It should be easier to study through out the course.

[taxistaxing]

From my experience so far, "easy or hard" probably depends on you. If you're a whizz with maths then the traditionally "hard" subjects like Gen Nav might come more easily. Subjects like air law, ops are "easier" in the sense that they don't require much thought or understanding, just rote-learning of facts. My school orders the subejcts as follows:

Stage 1: HPL; Ops; Air law; Met; VFR Coms; IFR Coms;

Stage 2: POF; Gen Nav; M&B; Performance; Flight planning;

Stage 3: AGK; Instruments; Radio Nav.

They told me I should definitely do stage 1 first, but could then do stage 2 and 3 either way around. That has worked okay for me so far. I've completed stage 1, I'm about to sit the stage 3 exams (fingers crossed), and have pushed stage 2 to the end.

[stn]

And we did it like this:

• First POF, AGK, Ops, Met, General nav, M & B, VFR comms, IFR comms
• On second round Air law, Instruments, Radio nav, Performance
• Lastly, HPL and Flight Planning

This obviously wasn't the best way to get the exams done but this was the way our school wanted us to take them. Looking back I'd group atleast POF+AGK on the same day as they are kind of same subject, as well as instrumentation and radio navigation.

[Trolle]

I had to travel from abroad to take the exams so I took those tests that were grouped according to the days, such as all those on Monday and all those on Tuesday. This helped to keep my expenses down. However, subject-matter wise it probably wasn't the most conducive to my studying, but I had FAA licenses and experience so the material wasn't new to me.