Is the JAA PPL/IR question bank available freely?

[LH2]

Originally Posted by IO540

I don't get this because it is ambiguous.

Well, see? That's why you memorise the whole lot and get over it.

But one assumption might be that it is something to do with flying with wind from the left, therefore you are flying towards the centre of a low pressure, so you will be descending in terms of true altitude.

Yes, that's what they're after (not a listing plane as suggested above, unless that was one of the choices in the paper )

Or, the "right drift" expression might mean that your heading is to the right of your GPS track,

No, it means that your craft is being pushed that way, as Mr. Two Dozen Carrots has pointed out before me. Standard navigation terminology.

It's a deliberately confusing question.

They're meant to be. After all it is a multiple choice with only four possible answers.

And your correct statement about the air getting warmer just makes it impossible to answer correctly.

They've got it all figured out. That's why they ask you to go for the "most probable" answer.

If you find this hard... think you could be taking the Chinese ATPLs instead.

[tmmorris]

Interesting. I looked at the CATS demo and tried some of the Human Performance questions - there are 636 of them. I got to about 20 before I got one wrong - without any IR training at all (just a crappy old PPL/IMCR...)

I guess there might be more to it - but seven subjects each requiring 2 months' study? You're having a laugh. I did the entire PPL including all seven exams in three and a half weeks full time. I reckon (funding aside) that I could do the 7 IR exams in 14 months on one evening a week.

Tim

[IO540]

The human performance exam should be easy.

I think any competent pilot should pass maybe 3/4 out of the 7 exams straight off.

It is stuff like the Met one which are hugely time consuming.

Nevertheless I think a good strategy would be to sit them all (over 2 days is the quickest way possible) and then revise properly for those you failed.

[24Carrot]

but seven subjects each requiring 2 months' study?

CATS suggest a notional 6 months for 7 subjects. There are exam sessions at Gatwick every 2 months, which reduces the flexibility.

I did the entire PPL including all seven exams...

The IR exams are harder, I think, than the PPL exams. IMHO a lot of it is useful, but they are also full of memory stuff that fits in well with multiple choice answers, but is of little use outside the exam room. Why, for example, do I need to know the minimum lateral separations a Radar Controller can give me? I can't see his screen, nor am I controlling his traffic. And the code letters for the width of taxiways?

Nevertheless I think a good strategy would be to sit them all (over 2 days is the quickest way possible) and then revise properly for those you failed.

Probably a good idea, though the training organisation has to sign off on the exam application. I believe you are supposed to spend a certain minimum number of hours studying, and they might smell a rat if the hours do not fit into the calendar time available!

And finally, IO540, your magenta line might well be within 100m of track and pointing in the right direction, but even on NAV the autopilot achieves that by pointing your aircraft to the left of track, into wind, to compensate for the right drift. You are still drifting to the right of your heading, but your combined flying through the air and drifting with it is towards your destination! But I know you know that, so this is just semantics, right?

[421C]

I think any competent pilot should pass maybe 3/4 out of the 7 exams straight off

No way. IFR Coms yes, flight planning maybe, no chance for any of the others for "any competent pilot", maybe someone with a super in-depth interest in an exam topic might have a chance.

Nevertheless I think a good strategy would be to sit them all (over 2 days is the quickest way possible) and then revise properly for those you failed

We always disagree on this point. I think that would be a silly strategy. You don't need to go to Gatwick to see which exams you are going to pass. The various progress tests and software will give you a very good indication. So you might as well study for the ones you are likely to fail.

Carrot24 is right. A school is not there to rubber-stamp whatever you want to do. The study you undertake is at the discretion of the school's Head of Training if you are doing an FAA>JAA IR conversion. In practice, if you have a sensible approach to self-study, then I think they are likely to let you sit the exams at your own discretion. I don't think any would support a strategy of just turning up to see how you do having done no study.

brgds
421C

[IO540]

I was writing in the context of FAA IR to JAA IR conversion.

In the UK (UK only, as far as I can tell) this process does not have the mandatory ground school.

Ab Initio IR is totally different; you are dealing with a pilot who usually has zilch IFR knowledge and more to the point has had zilch exposure to the subject theory.

In this context, you don't get much preparation as such. You spend a day at a ground school establishment which for approx £1000 spends some hours going over the stuff and then sends you to LGW to sit the exams.

I imagine they check out roughly how much you know, but in the end how much you actually self study is up to you.

The downside of my suggested approach is that the hardest bit will be the hardest one of the seven exams (obviously) and if you failed that one exam 3 times, you have to re-sit all seven This is at best a waste of money, at £65 each, but it also takes time due to the exam timetable. So some swatting from the question bank would be well advised - which is why I started this thread in the first place.

However I stand by my assertion that some of the exams are very easy and some are very hard.

[S-Works]

None of the exams are hard, they just need an understanding of the subject. For an experiences IR pilot they should not be an issue to convert.

Most people I know have done them in 2 months over 2 sittings without problems.

[421C]

I was writing in the context of FAA IR to JAA IR conversion

So was I.

In the UK (UK only, as far as I can tell) this process does not have the mandatory ground school

That's why I wrote "The study you undertake is at the discretion of the school's Head of Training if you are doing an FAA>JAA IR conversion...." in the context of a conversion. If it's ab initio, there is an approved course which includes specific exercises to be completed, specific hours of self-study and specific hours of classroom attendance.

None of the exams are hard, they just need an understanding of the subject. For an experiences IR pilot they should not be an issue to convert.

I agree, but saying they are not "hard" is not the same as saying a sensible strategy is to just 'have a go' with no study. Even a few hours skimming the study notes and running through the past papers would make a vast difference. The person who I know who did the conversion fastest was a 200-300hr FAA IR who did about 45hrs study to get (IIRC) just over 90% as first time passes in one sitting for all seven papers. Perhaps someone like that would have passed with 50-70% of that study. But no study? No way. A total waste of time for all but the IFR Coms. Flight Planning is quite straightforward for the experienced pilot, but you'd still be crazy not to study for a few hours. HPL is not a hard paper, but there is a lot of material. Big swathes of it are fairly straighforward (perhaps that's were the CATS demo samples come from), but a fair amount isn't. The HPL paper has a relatively low number of questions, so you can't get many wrong to get 75% or more.

There are some articles on the PPL/IR website open to the public (I think) which cover all this:
Here: http://www.pplir.org/images/stories/...0tk%20v1.1.pdf
and here: PPL/IR Europe - Getting a JAA/IR - Personal Practical Experience

[IO540]

With a bit of luck all this will be moot anyway

The agreements reached (and proposals published) thus far can hardly be tightened in either scope or timescale. But they can be loosened and it appears certain, as of 2-3 days ago, that nothing will happen to the N-reg community before 2015.

So anybody sitting the JAA exams now on a "just in case" basis is a fool because they will expire well before 2015. You have to be intending to do the whole lot - flying and all.

Considering how much enjoyment I've had from my FAA IR since getting it in 2006, 5 more years is plenty of time to ponder about this, and there will be loads of changes c. 2012 anyway.

There was going to be a transitional period after 2012 anyway (varying according to national CAA arrangements) and there is bound to be a similar transitional period after the new 2014 date, so we may be looking at 2016-2017 before somebody who does absolutely nothing is actually grounded. And even then, many private N-reg pilots will be able to fly IFR with a JAA IR in the RHS, or by filing Z flight plans, etc.

I now feel more strongly than ever that doing the JAA IR now is a waste of time - unless you enjoy doing this kind of stuff for the fun of it.

[S-Works]

I now feel more strongly than ever that doing the JAA IR now is a waste of time - unless you enjoy doing this kind of stuff for the fun of it.

You just keep convincing yourself.......

[Fuji Abound]

You just keep convincing yourself.......

but why wouldnt you?

A whole lot can happen in 4 or 5 years. You might lose your medical in that time or get fed up with flying for other reasons.

As others have said the exams arent that much of a problem and if in four or five or six years time they have to be done so be it, and if things turn out differently then you will have saved yourself a pot of money and a certain amount of hassle.

More to the point just think of the "fun" we would all miss out on in the mean time (and please dont take that as an entirely serious remark).

In my experience with these sort of things it is usually a mistake to rush into things. Buy a new eco friendly green car with a £5K subsidy from the government might seem a good idea now, in two years time it will cost half that without the subsidy.

I recall Bose telling us the IMCr would be dead in the water (and was there something about eating his fuel filter) - well at the moment it is still not dead in the water. Who knows where it will go but making predictions in this game is a very dangerous business indeed except you will almost certainly find 75% of the people here today will not be here in four years time so you do have a get out of jail free card.

[S-Works]

I still stand by the view the IMCr is dead in the water.........

[lasseb]

To my knowledge there is no such thing as a PPL/IR question bank.
There is an IR question bank, which is a sub-set of the ATPL questions.
The IR theory does not distinguish between PPL or CPL.

All the major question banks provide the IR exam subset.
(aviation-exam, jaaqb.com, bristol.gs, pilotexam etc... use google)