WEEK 8&9: COMMS & MOCKS #12

Airline Prep

so true!

Last week brought an end to module one with the beautiful subject that is VFR and IFR COMMS. There were just three days of teaching and more than one of those was spent finishing off instruments and going over a few areas of weakness from other topics. COMMS itself took just over a day to teach and after two nights spent doing it on question bank I felt fairly comfortable with it.

We also got a chance to go on the 737-300 simulator to physically experience some of the things we have learned in POF and INST which was great fun. Four of us spent about three hours in there going through various procedures such as being out of trim, auto-lands, programming the auto-pilot etc. It was awsome and definitely helped visualize a few things that were slightly unclear before, such as the effects of stick force stability. It made me feel like a pilot again! 

fixed base 737-300 sim

me flying the 737-300 sim

Captain DJ Patel & First Officer Harry Clark

the desk of the working man

the view from my window in the New Forrest

the house toys

the CRP-5 computer (or 'crap 5' as it's called)

So with all the lessons completed we had just four days to revise our seven subjects for the mocks. This time was spent solidly revising/question banking from 9 AM till 9 PM with the rare break to play a spot of tennis in the sunshine.

The mocks are structured like so:


Monday: MET & LAW
Tuesday: POF & INST
Wednesday: AGK, VFR COMMS, IFR COMMS

My goal was to pass five or more out of the seven so that I didn't have to retake any exams and felt like I was in a decent position. Because of the lack of time we had to revise I decided to sacrifice instruments and accept a fail in that so that I could focus on the other six subjects. I don't think I was the only one with that method as only two people passed the exam. I am glad to say though that I achieved my goal, with results of:

MET: 83%
LAW: 89%
POF: 73% (one mark short. bugger!)
INST: 65%
AGK: 84%
VFR COMMS: 96%
IFR COMMS: 92%

AVERAGE: 83%

(The pass mark is 75% for each paper)

I was very happy with these results considering the lack of time we had to revise. I was so annoyed that I failed POF because I was just ONE MARK SHORT and I made one stupid mistake where I worked the question out correctly but ticked the wrong box!! But never mind. They say that on average your marks go up by 10% for the real exams which suits me fine. The mocks are also apparently a little bit harder than the real thing because CTC write a few of the questions themselves. Generally the majority of the questions are from question bank though.

If you fail three or more mocks then you have to re-take the failed papers a few days later, which is a bit of a drag but CTC just want to make sure that you are ready to take the real exams.

I've come home for my revision period to take advantage of the cooking and get away from the horses and the cows (I'm not talking about my house mates there).

my revision time table

I'm going for a Chinese and a few beers with some friends tonight and I'm going to have a fairly relaxed day tomorrow by watching the England T20 match and revising a bit of LAW and COMMS. The hard work starts again on Friday.

Real exams start in eleven days on the 7th of April.