Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

Moderator: AndyR

By Pilotstuart
#1864330
I took my first e-exams yesterday (Air Law & Ops Proc) and passed both…hooray!! Although a couple of questions wrong and I’m intrigued to know where I went wrong, and what the right answers should have been. I received the standard PDF confirmation exam results but it only defines the syllabus area reference numbers and not actual the questions themselves. Is this all you receive or haven’t I looked far enough? Not very helpful if a student can’t learn from their mistakes, which I thought was an important part of learning to fly! :D
T6Harvard, davenuk liked this
User avatar
By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1864338
Well done! I am hoping to do those 2 as my first ones in so can't answer your query about feedback, although I have been told the same.

May I ask if the questions were as expected or where there any surprises as to subject or the way they were asked?
User avatar
By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1864350
Pilotstuart wrote:I took my first e-exams yesterday (Air Law & Ops Proc) and passed both…hooray!! Although a couple of questions wrong and I’m intrigued to know where I went wrong, and what the right answers should have been. I received the standard PDF confirmation exam results but it only defines the syllabus area reference numbers and not actual the questions themselves. Is this all you receive or haven’t I looked far enough? Not very helpful if a student can’t learn from their mistakes, which I thought was an important part of learning to fly! :D


They don't want to tell you the questions you got wrong, and the answers, for fairly obvious reasons I'd have thought!

If I were you, I'd look up the references and go back to the respective areas in your study material. You'll probably then remember the questions and how you answered and should be able to see where you went wrong.

Working out what you got wrong and why is more likely to embed the information that just being told a raw answer.
TopCat liked this
User avatar
By bladerunner911
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1864544
I have Air Law and Ops on Saturday, I really hope I pass as I hate exams. I'll feel much better once I have done one to know what to expect and how well my study strategy is working - or not...
I'll try and share any helpful advice and feedback along with the result.
T6Harvard liked this
User avatar
By bladerunner911
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1864858
Just a quick update to say I passed both exams this morning, so relieved!
I spent a lot longer studying for Air Law than Operational Procedures, which most likley explains the different in the results for the two exams.
I used Easy PPL and the Pooleys books and found the two approaches prepared me really well for the exams. Things like the SkyWay Code also help to cross reference and verify information. The info is presented in different ways and a few things related to airspace have changed failry recently so it's good to have the most up to date info.
The tests and exams for the Easy PPL course prepare you really well for the exams, and ensure you understand the subjects thoroughly,
It's important to really know and understand the subject and be able to answer variations on a question.
Some of the answers were really obviously wrong if you knew the subject, which is how it should be if we are going to fly safely!
Hope this doesn't sound like an ad for these tools!
Rob P, scd975, T6Harvard liked this
User avatar
By JAFO
#1864863
GrahamB wrote:
Pilotstuart wrote:They don't want to tell you the questions you got wrong, and the answers, for fairly obvious reasons I'd have thought.


I don't think it is obvious. I can see that if you failed they would not want you to just go away and learn questions and answers parrot fashion but if you have passed, I would think it would be more helpful to know which question you got wrong and what answer they were expecting so that you could work backwards and understand the flaws in your original answer.
User avatar
By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1864890
JAFO wrote:
GrahamB wrote:
Pilotstuart wrote:They don't want to tell you the questions you got wrong, and the answers, for fairly obvious reasons I'd have thought.


I don't think it is obvious. I can see that if you failed they would not want you to just go away and learn questions and answers parrot fashion but if you have passed, I would think it would be more helpful to know which question you got wrong and what answer they were expecting so that you could work backwards and understand the flaws in your original answer.

If you got feedback on exactly the questions you got wrong, along with the correct answers, how long do you think it would take in this age of the internet for a complete question bank to appear, which (some) people would just learn by rote without even attempting to understand the principles?
scd975 liked this
By Pilotstuart
#1866589
Good responses here, thanks everyone.
There were some surprises in the exams which I wasn’t expecting; ie one of the Air Ops questions had three answers to it which I hadn’t had before in mocks. You’re right in that they should not get to the stage where it is a common question bank (like the driving test!). There was one question about licenses in Air Law which was completely new material for me and I’m convinced it’s not even mentioned in the Pooley book or Easy PPL slides. But I can’t tell you exactly what that was now!!!
T6Harvard liked this
User avatar
By Andrew Sinclair
#1866690
It is no surprise that there is a divergence between exam question scope and training material scope since the published PPL TK syllabus/learning objectives do not contain sufficient detail on which to be have any real confidence that the questions writers will have the same interpretation of the syllabus scope as the training material producers.

I have spent 8 weeks so far going through Air Law and Operational Procedures to get that confidence and have come across literally hundreds of different detailed pieces of knowledge, where it isn’t clear whether they should or should not be in the scope of PPL TK and even one which is unusually explicitly stated in the PPL scope but isn’t any longer in the ATPL scope!

It is a difficult ‘heavy lifting’ task that needs to be completed and agreed in order for confidence in the eExam system to be renewed.
Last edited by Andrew Sinclair on Sun Aug 22, 2021 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bladerunner911 liked this
User avatar
By bladerunner911
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1866771
Wow what a mess. On my Operational Procedures exam I got a strange license question that I don'yt recall seeing mentioned in the study material. I think it may have been on I got wrong. When I checked the learning material afterwards based on the exam feedback I was still confused.
This makes me think this may have been one of the added questions that was not checked by the working group.
Looks like we are all in for a bit of a lottery until something changes :-(
I would try not to be too concerned T6, as it's unlikely you would get more than one or two rogue questions. All my Air Law questions were about things I had studied. Good luck for the exams!
User avatar
By bladerunner911
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1866777
Sorry I was meaning Air Law which has 16 qs.
I take your point, it's a mess that needs fixing quickly as we are all going to be affected. At the same time I don't think adding additional stress / pressure about upcoming exams is the way to go. We all need to support each other during our training as much as possible :-)

Sent from my SM-G970F using Tapatalk