Fri May 17, 2019 8:38 pm
#1694349
If you're taking CPL theory (and I think one or two are) and have yet to do flight planning then you may want to read this. I thought I was very well prepared for this exam and actually thought it was my best bet for getting 100% (or close) but you need to be very wary of only studying what is in the CPL syllabus.
My training providers notes state I have no need to study planning for jet aircraft or topics such as penalty fuel and reduced contingency fuel planning. What I got was an exam that was so alien to me that I thought I'd been set an ATPL exam by mistake. The exam was almost entirely jet-based, with no questions on SEP and MEP planning. There were questions on jet airliner long range cruise tables (I'd never even seen one before), some other rather complex table, I think mach numbers were involved, that I've not seen before and can't find in CAP697 and questions that meant absolutely nothing at all to me (such as the above mentioned fuel topics)! I eventually ran out of time trying to do questions that I had no hope of getting right as I hadn't studied the topics involved. My result was so embarrassingly low that I don't even get a list of the deficient learning objectives.
I wouldn't normally go on a forum and announce my failures to the world but I'd rather other people had a bit of a head's up on what, to me, was an extremely unfair and unexpected set of exam questions. It might be a good idea to study this topic to ATPL level, because you may well need to and that's what I'll be doing over the next two weeks.
Mods:- please move this to students if you think it's more at home there.
My training providers notes state I have no need to study planning for jet aircraft or topics such as penalty fuel and reduced contingency fuel planning. What I got was an exam that was so alien to me that I thought I'd been set an ATPL exam by mistake. The exam was almost entirely jet-based, with no questions on SEP and MEP planning. There were questions on jet airliner long range cruise tables (I'd never even seen one before), some other rather complex table, I think mach numbers were involved, that I've not seen before and can't find in CAP697 and questions that meant absolutely nothing at all to me (such as the above mentioned fuel topics)! I eventually ran out of time trying to do questions that I had no hope of getting right as I hadn't studied the topics involved. My result was so embarrassingly low that I don't even get a list of the deficient learning objectives.
I wouldn't normally go on a forum and announce my failures to the world but I'd rather other people had a bit of a head's up on what, to me, was an extremely unfair and unexpected set of exam questions. It might be a good idea to study this topic to ATPL level, because you may well need to and that's what I'll be doing over the next two weeks.
Mods:- please move this to students if you think it's more at home there.