WEEK 10 & 11: EXAMS AND MOD 1 SUMMARY #13

Airline Prep

Well that's it, half way through ground school and all seven module one exams are finished. That was one of the most stressful weeks ever, I've never worked so hard in my life before. I can't believe how much I have learned in such a short period of time.

After the mocks I went home to start my revision. It was great being at home for 10 days. I worked from about 9am till 8pm every day, focusing most of my attention towards MET, INSTRUMENTS & POF, whilst doing a little bit of LAW & COMMS each evening just to keep it fresh in my mind. Surprisingly, that magic click that people speak of happened and my results started getting up to decent pass marks on the question bank. I didn't think the time we had to revise would be enough but by the end of the week I was losing the will to live with spending all day every day doing questions on the bank and felt ready to take the real exams.

My baby that's been keeping me sane

The time table was as follows:

Monday: POF 9:30 - 10:30 (44 questions), AGK 10:45-12:45 (80 questions)
Tuesday: INST 9 - 10:30 (60 questions)
Wednesday: MET 13:45 - 15:45 (84 questions)
Thursday: LAW 9 - 10 (44 questions) , VFR COMMS 11:30 - 12 , IFR COMMS 12:10 - 12:40 (24 questions each)

During the exam week I would work solidly for the next exam until about 9 pm which is when my brain packed in for the day and I would wake up at about 6 am to get a bit of revision in to make it fresh in my mind. The earliest I got up was 5:30 am!!!

This is a fairly accurate picture of me during the last couple of weeks

To my surprise a vast majority of the questions in all the papers were identical to the question bank, which was a huge relief. However, there was the odd new question or a few that had been changed around subtly. I think I was caught out by a couple of those in MET and POF but hopefully I would have done enough to pass. I generally feel good about the exams with the exception of POF which I am a bit anxious about but we will see in a couple of weeks time when the results come out. Fingers crossed!

DJ and his top quality T-shirt

To summarise MOD 1;
there is a lot of information to take on in a very short space of time. The only option is to work non-stop. I personally think spending lots of time reading through the CBT is a bit of a waste of time. Getting the CBT out the way as soon as possible is a good idea and I found that AVIATION EXAM was excellent whilst learning the subjects as it has a big amount of questions with very good explanations. If you understand a topic then you answer the question right and move on. If not then you spend more time on those areas, reading the explanations and practicing difficult questions. So you're learning exam technique as well as what you're doing wrong as you go along. Then when it came to revision I started using ATPL ONLINE which seemed to be pretty accurate and reliable.
My favorite subject so far has been MET, even though it was probably the hardest paper. LAW and INSTRUMENTS was deeply boring but it's just a matter of learning the questions on the bank for those, COMMS is nice and easy, just learn the bank and POF is quite hard to get your head round but you just need to keep chipping away at it until you understand it reasonably well, and AGK requires a bit of knowledge in certain areas but again is mainly just facts learned from doing questions. Topics such as electrics and engines is probably where you need a decent understanding.

After the final exam myself, Luke and DJ had a barbeque with CP113, who just finished their MOD2's and are off to New Zealand soon. I get on really well with the guys on that CP and will miss them but look forward to being reunited with them in a few months time. I wish them the best of luck for their results.

I now have 4 whole days off where no work is required before returning on Tuesday to start MOD 2. Not a huge amount of time so I intend to make the most of this long weekend.