WEEK 17&18: RNAV #18

Airline Prep

The last couple of weeks have brought an end to an extremely busy month. The latest subject to be completed was RNAV (Radio Navigation). RNAV is more like the module one subjects because it is more factual based and there's not as many calculations. Rumor is it's a data base subject which is good. However, with our next set of exams being electronic we are all a little bit worried about the questions that will come up. The fear is that there will be a load of new, unseen questions which means we will need to know the subject in much more depth than has previously been required.

RNAV is basically the theory of radio waves and aids such as VOR's, NDB's, DME's, various instruments and how they respond when tracking various radio aids. If I'm honest it can get a bit boring but some of it is very relevant so I tend to be more interested in that part than the actual theory of how radio waves travel etc.

Big wasp nest outside the house

To my surprise and delight we were given another sim session, where we practiced tracking VOR's and NDB's. I found this helpful because it gave me an opportunity to actually see how the instruments we studied respond. We took off from Gatwick in the 737-400, flew around for a bit then followed  a series of beacons into Bristol is bad visibility, using an approach plate (STAR), which we had studied in flight planning. Everything happened very quickly and if you're not totally certain on what you're doing then you get behind and it is almost impossible to recover it (as Luke and I found out). Following the aids en-route wasn't a problem and we did that pretty well but our approach was a bit messy and the landing was one not to be spoken of again.... But as far as the purpose of the exercise was concerned I found it very beneficial.The target is to fly as close to the marker radio as possible by putting the coffin in the grave. A skill which becomes easier with practice.

The info we were given for the flight

Captain Clark

Ashurst lads in the cockpit

Captain Clark & First Officer Patel at the controls before Take Off at Gatwick

2 of the displays I was following on the ND (nav display)

Myself, Luke, DJ and a good friend of mine, Nick Tester, went to the Rose Bowl on Friday night to watch Hampshire vs Essex in a T20 match. It was so good to watch some cricket again and made me want to play again. Definitely getting a few withdrawl symptoms at the moment. It was a really nice evening out though and a well deserved treat for us.

I now have four days off to catch up on a bit of sleep and recap on RNAV, GNAV, MASS & BALANCE, FLIGHT PLANNING and PERFORMANCE. Time much needed.We now only have eight days of lessons left before we're into revision and mocks. Very exciting but very scary too. One week closer to New Zealand!

 

At least we didn't end up like this...

WEEK 16: FLIGHT PLANNING #17

Airline Prep

Flying's easy with directions

I have just finished a long week of flight planning. It's amazing how a week feels so much longer without a CBT day, I'm very glad it's the weekend now, even though it will be spent revising. Just not having to go into the center for a couple of days will be nice.

A high level chart. These are all possible airways to fly in the South of England region. Terrifying!

There was a lot to take in for flight planning (as always), lots of charts, tables and graphs. A majority of the questions revolve around working out the fuel required depending on the weight and distance. And then you have to compensate for the altitude and temperature deviation with or without an engine failure which will affect the drag and efficiency of the engine so will affect the fuel flow and so on... all very complicated. There is a different graph or table for each scenario so you just need to flick to the right page and interpret it correctly. 

A typical table from the CAP

A typical graph from the CAP

Having to work out routes from A to B on various charts or calculating the lowest/highest allowable altitude to fly and reading the particular airports SID (standard instrument departure) or STAR (standard instrument arrival) is another of the many sections. I enjoy that bit of it because it is real practical stuff that we are going to be doing during our training and on the line on a day to day basis. It's not always easy because the charts can get quite congested but it is quite fun.

The Heathrow to Munich flight plan DJ & I filled in

Towards the end of the week we had to plan a couple of routes and fill out a flight plan for Heathrow to Munich and Stansted to Biarritz using the charts in our Jepessen's and all of the skills we had learned. We had to find the correct airways, measure the distance and calculate the time and the fuel required, including reserves and allowance for the wind. Both times my desk partner and I were very successful but it took quite a long time and a lot of faffing. I really enjoyed those tasks though.

A Heathrow STAR (standard instrument arrival)

Like all the subjects it isn't easy but after practice should become manageable.

A lot of the class have been suffering from a stinking cold over the last couple of weeks, including both my housemates. I have been pumping myself full of vitamins which is working so far so hopefully I can continue to avoid it, although with both Luke and DJ suffering it can only be a matter of time until I come down with it too. Immune system don't fail me now! 

WEEK 15: PERFORMANCE #16

Airline Prep

CP116

Performance was the topic this week, also known as POF 2. If I'm perfectly honest it wasn't the most interesting of subjects but it's got to be done anyway.

There's a fair bit of theory which is very similar to POF, such as determining the performance of the aircraft when it is at a certain point on the drag curve, what happens to the glide range or fuel consumption with a head/tailwind or how an increase/decrease in mass affects the descent rate. The rest of the subject revolves around interpreting graphs or tables for either single engine piston, multi-engine piston or medium range jet aircraft. The task is generally to find a required take off mass, take off/landing distance whilst taking into account all of the necessary safety requirements and weather and surface conditions. I didn't realise how much there was to it! I thought it was just load up and go. How wrong I was...

These are things that you just don't consider as a passenger. The margin for error on calculations like these are so slim and if they are done wrong then the result could be catastrophic! So I guess as far as this subject goes it is actually quite relevant.

Ground School Housemates

However, when it comes to actually answering questions it can get quite tedious. You have to work so accurately and precisely on the graphs and even if you are as careful as can be and do the right method, you still don't always get the right answer which is very frustrating. It is also difficult to know sometimes which safety factors to apply and where. The questions are pretty time consuming and it's very irritating spending ages working it out and getting an answer totally different to the one the CAA have given. But, like all the other subjects, with a bit of practice it should start clicking in to place.

Class hard at work

I was the last person in the group to turn 19 this week. My birthday was celebrated by a day of performance, work in the evening and a Chinese with Luke and DJ whilst watching Man City increase their hopes of stealing the title again. My Mum and step-dad had come down the previous Sunday evening to take myself and my housemates out for dinner and wish me happy birthday which was very nice and this Saturday my Dad took me to Twickenham to see Harlequins v Bath for a place in the play offs. It was a really good day out, even though Bath sadly lost.

Today is going to be a long day practicing performance and then I have a whole week of flight planning to look forward to.

Just how every person wants to spend their 19th bday

19th bday Chinese & football

Cake before the ants got it

Dad & I at the stoop

Rugby and planes. Perfect!

Virgin A330 landing @ Heathrow

WEEK 14: MASS & BALANCE AND MOD1 RESULTS #15

Airline Prep

Trying to prevent this....

This week has been a relatively easy week. We only had two days of teaching which was spent on mass and balance. This was enough time to cover the whole subject which means that's two down, five to go (only 6 weeks of teaching). Mass and balance doesn't seem to be too daunting once you learn the method. There is a lot of maths involved but the actual maths isn't particularly taxing. The hardest part is trying to interpret what the question is actually asking for. There are a few charts, graphs and tables which look quite scary at first but I think spending a couple of days going over it should be sufficient time to get it more or less cracked. Then it's just a matter of chipping away at it to keep it fresh. A lot of it is definitely relevant to what we are going to be doing in the future by calculating center of gravity positions, how much mass to transfer from one part of the aircraft to another etc.

 

a scary of example of incorrect loading

New Lanyard. Very exciting!

We also received our results for module 1 this week which was a very nerve-racking period. We heard rumors that oxford had received their results and were therefore very anxious to find out ours. None of us had had an email but luckily the chief ground school instructor was taking us and we persuaded him to tell us our results immediately. There was a lot of tension in the air. We had to wait together in the class room and were called out one by one to go out and receive the results. It felt like a very long walk from the class room across the hall and my heart was beating very fast indeed. To my delight I saw that I had passed all 7 exams with a 90% average, which was 5% better than the goal I set myself, so as you can imagine I am absolutely over the moon. Goes to show that hard work pays off! I will just need to repeat the process in a few weeks time and then it's off to New Zealand!

Out of the 20 people in the class I think 9 passed all first time and the rest only have one or two retakes to do in June, which isn't too bad. My housemate, Luke did the best with 7 passes at an average of 97%. ABSOLUTE MACHINE!

MODULE 1 RESULTS:

PRINCIPLES OF FLIGHT: 84%
AIRCRAFT GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: 83%
INSTRUMENTS: 96%
METEOROLOGY: 89%
AIR LAW: 84%
VFR COMMUNICATION: 95%
IFR COMMUNICATION: 100%

AVERAGE: 90%

Results Sheet

If you have a cadet selection day or airline interview coming up then I strongly suggest you check this website out. You can download the app on your iphone or ipad. These guys are worth every penny.

www.airlineprep.co.uk/app

WEEK 12 &13: GNAV #14

Airline Prep

Over the last two weeks I have been studying the first subject of module 2; GNAV (General Navigation)
.

Before I got started on that though I had four whole days off without any obligation to question bank or do CBT, a very strange feeling indeed. I took the opportunity to catch up with friends and family. I spent one evening with my old mates from school where more than one beer was drunk and I can't remember a moment when we weren't laughing. It was great to spend time with them again. The next day I went to the London Marathon to support my uncle who was running. It was an amazing experience, the weather was perfect and the atmosphere was absolutely incredible! We also celebrated by cousins 4th birthday which was good fun. I managed to get a round of golf in with my dad too before I trekked back to Southampton. It couldn't have been a better weekend.

The boys back together

 

Family at the Marathon

The Marathon

Uncle Jim in surprisingly good shape having just run 26 miles

Golf at Singing Hills

Dad aiming for the green

Right, onto business! We had 9 teaching days of GNAV over the last two weeks and it was completely different to any of the module one subjects. It is a very practical subject with quite a lot of maths (mainly trigonometry). There is less information to absorb and there is more time spent during the day doing example questions and practicing it yourself. There are quite a few different components to it and some of the questions can be tricky to work out for someone like myself who has never been a mathematical genius. I find it helps to draw diagrams which allows me to visualise the situation. Questions consist of working out true and magnetic tracks on various types of charts from the latitude, longitude, distance given etc, time differences between different places on the Earth, plotting positions on maps, working out drift angles, wind velocities etc on the CRP-5. These are just some of the type of questions that come up so I'm sure you appreciate how much there is to do. I think the way to crack this subject is simply by practicing and figuring out a method to solving each question. No longer can you just question bank for hours and learn the answers, the method is actually required for this topic. I personally prefer it though because you're more involved during the day. There's not much room for boredom to creep in.

The Jeppesen Airway Manual

One of the many charts from the Jeppesen

My Cousins' 4th Birthday

Cow in the garden

This weekend has been spent solving equation after equation but it seems to getting easier and it's making more sense so that must be a good thing!

We are still waiting for our module one results to come through and I'm very anxious to find out how I've done.

CP Football

CP Football

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.