ATPL Distance Learning
 

I completed my ATPL exams distance learning, I finished them in just over 8 months, ended up with a 90%+ average over 4 sittings. Some exams can be question-banked to death so do so where you can. I remember RNAV and Ops procedures being banked. I grouped them into manageable sittings.

Ops, Law, Met, HPL, IFR Comms, VFR Comms
POF, M&B
GNAV, F Planning, Perf
RNAV, Instruments, AGK

Wouldn't worry too much about Physics, just a basic understanding of a few principles, which would be explained in the books/CBT you decide to use. Maths, just make sure you can do basic maths, estimating, multiplication, division etc. nothing too onerous.

Anything you get stuck on, I found a few second hand Oxford CBT's on ebay. Absolute gold for Met.

My best advice would be to actually understand the material as much as you can, but if all else fails, hammer the question bank...(I used BGS)

"Some exams can be question-banked to death so do so where you can"

Not any more.

Quite a few guys here that have done the new style exams said that they hammered the question bank for some subjects and it worked. Admittedly I did my exams last year and finished in April before the electronic exams, but apparently it still works, just not as dead-cert as it used to be.

@ paco

I wrote Air Law, OPs, IFR & VFR Comms in Germany 2 weeks ago and those questions were 1 -1 from Peter's EXAM databank. GNav on the other hand was basically all new questions. :ugh:
Going to do Planning, RadioNAv, Human, A/C Gen Knowledge, W&B, Performance, and Aerodynamics next.

One of my students did Met last week and 50% of the questions were not seen before. Some authorities are behind others, but that is the trend now.

Interesting how they do that? Didn't the UK CAA make a big thing about saying that everyone had to use the EASA CQB? We were told that was why all the defective questions came back in. Are all the NAAs using different question banks again?

ProPilot
 

Is anyone currently with ProPilot on the DL program?

Have you had to use any other suplimentary material?

To be fair, even in my exam, half the questions i hadn't seen. I made sure I fully understood Met and was glad I did for the exam. Any of your students done Ops, RNAV and Air Law? They were big bankers for me.

At the moment Law and Ops seem not to have changed too much, but Ops is changing anyway with the changes in legislation and I am currently working on new questions as we speak. They are probably the only subjects aside from comms that you just have to rote learn anyway.

All the other subjects have changed or are changing.

Alex - not sure what different authorities are doing. Some of them are still paper based certainly. Being behind was the only reason I could think of for some people reporting that their exams were the same as some of the commercial databases. But then I checked and realised they were referring to the subjects I just mentioned.

Hi Scoobster,

I'm with ProPilot doing DL, and have found it very good so far. The set up here is 3 modules.

1 - POF, Met, M&B, HPL, VFR Comms, IFR Comms
2 - GNav, RNav, Perf, Flight Planning, Air Law
3 - AGK, Ops, Instruments

I started in Feb 2014, and am working on Mod 3 now. The revision classroom weeks are very good (I'm doing the mod 2 revision this week) and really help consolidate the knowledge. I took all of the Mod 1 exams in 1 sitting and am looking to take all the Mod 2 exams in 1 sitting (maybe not Air Law). I haven't hammered the QB - ProPilot give you 1 year access included (best to get a bit of the way through Mod1 before activating), but think for Air Law , Ops and RNAV as Byrondaf mentioned I will have to as there is just so much information to absorb and it's not like you'll ever need to know in your professional life, how many lights there are across the threshold or which Annex number covers Dangerous Goods.

Best of luck, it's hard work but so interesting (mostly) and rewarding. I wouldn't try and force yourself to squeeze it into a short period of time, you have 18 months and if you are short of money for this, I'm guessing you won't have £15k+ to throw at a MEIR. If you are working full time, I can't see that you would be able to get through it in less than a year, unless you did nothing else with your off time.

Books arrived today...

Picked one up at Random Air Law... Jeez... The size of that book.

Still time to get cracking. Onwards and upwards and all that jazz.

Hi,

Started my ATPL on April 11th 2014, passed the last exam on Feb 5th 2015, got 93% average.

English is not my mother tongue, I've a full time engineer job and took 3 weeks vacation in summer.

I think that if you work 3 hours/day plus 10 hours on week ends 8 month is far sufficient.

Good luck buddy !

Hi

Just found this post and wondered how you got on with the exams or if your still going please? Looking to start mine in new year just bought the maths and physics as prep?