PPL written exam

[The Forbidden Fruit]

Hi all

I've been studying for the PPL written exam for several months now using Harv's air online ground school. I've viewed all the videos and have done the quizzes multiple times. I've also used other resources lie pultz study guide and aerotraining.ca. The more studying I do, and the closer I get to the practice written exams to get a recommend, the more I dread it. I already have my Rec permit. I did ok on that but had to re-write the nav portion. To sum it up I'm scared stiff for some strange reason. I've written many exams for school and career but this is different for some reason. Anyone feel this? Any advice from someone who has used harm's air and written the real exam would be most welcome. Any advice on how to study I'm I will be writing in the next 40 days?

Perhaps its the huge amount of material with harves air i find overwhelming. I wish I could narrow it down a little. I mean there is even a portion on Interpersonal relationships.

[Oxi]

You'll be just fine, go and write and study as needed from that.

[omgwereallgoingtodie]

someone actually posted a reasonable guide to answering transport Canada exams on here a while ago.

I'm paraphrasing and my apologies to the original poster but I can't find their actual response, but it basically went like this

multiple choice, process of elimination

1 answer will be blatantly wrong
1 answer will be right but for the wrong class of airspace ( controlled vs uncontrolled) etc
1 answer will be correct but in the wrong units ( ASL vs AGL , true ms magnetic ) etc.

eliminate those and you are left with the correct answer. Its been just under a year since I sat mine but that seemed about right.

my advice:

leave the Nav until the end, it can suck away your time if you let it (having said that I only need half the actual exam time to complete the entire thing, so time shouldn't be a pressure.

for the nav section

circle/highlight the airports they are talking about, draw in your route , use the markers to write down all the important stuff like headings/distance etc on the actual chart. that way you only have to measure them once. Oh and watch for the sign when dealing with variance , that almost caught me out .


if you are worried about the amount of info, download one of the apps ( I used one from dauntless i think) that throw a whole tonne of questions at you. You shouldn't use them to learn the material but they are useful in seeing what qs you are getting wrong.

[lownslow]

I find worrying is normal. When I was in school it was the tests I had no fear for that I did the worst on, I suspect the situation there was I didn't know what I didn't know. As you learn and understand more you start to see the enormous scope of it all, most of which is beyond what you'll need for the exam but as you study you see it and that messes with your head.

My gut tells me you're ready to write. See where you stand on your next practice exam and if you do well just go for it.

[JasonE]

Almost there myself. My instructor tells me no one really every feels completely ready to write.

[omgwereallgoingtodie]

In my opinion, it isn't the knowledge that's the problem.

I was probably ready, knowledge-wise a good six months before I actually sat my exam.
it was getting used to the convoluted logic and wording of the questions that was an issue for me.

Even now I have vague recollections of being convinced that for several questions none of the answers were actually correct.

[jump154]

Do the practice exams, study your weak areas and repeat. I also used the PPL exam answer guide, gave me another 1000 or so practice questions, and a full practice exam.
Got my recommend, then realised that it was only valid for a limited time.
Wrote exam, before I felt I was ready, got 98% - dropped marks on 2 questions I initially got correct, but changed.

All academic really, get over 60%, you have a pass on file and no one will ever really care how much you got. Go continue to learn to fly.

Nav - I was given a laminated map and a set of markers. as I plotted the route, it became very easy to see the remnants of the lines drawn by my predecessors. Didn't give the answers away, but gave me confidence I was in the right area!

[RyanF]

I'd recommend checking out Transport Canada's Private Pilot sample written exam. Exam is published by Transport Canada. Should ease your nerves a bit.

http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/ca- ... 13014e.pdf

[The Forbidden Fruit]

Hi all

thank you for all the advice and encouragement. I wrote one of the practice exams on Harv's air and got a 74%. General knowledge and Air Law I find are the easiest. I dropped atlas ten points on questions I should of known. Still struggling with Nav a little but not as bad as before. Now I know what I have to work on. Need to average 75% on three exams to get a recommend. The wording of some of the questions is just ridiculous. My soul will be eased if I make high 80's in the next two exams. More advice is welcome. I will keep you all posted.

[lownslow]

The wording of some of the questions is just ridiculous.

Slow down, read it again, and read it very carefully. Sometimes TC has to word it in a certain way to be absolutely sure there is only one correct and indisputable answer. They're just covering their butts.

[Big Pistons Forever]

More advice is welcome. I will keep you all posted.

As soon as you get the recommend, go write the exam, don't delay just get her done. Quite a bit of the material on the exam has no relevance to flying an airplane in the real world anyway.

[cbty]

Hi all

I've been studying for the PPL written exam for several months now using Harv's air online ground school. I've viewed all the videos and have done the quizzes multiple times. I've also used other resources lie pultz study guide and aerotraining.ca. The more studying I do, and the closer I get to the practice written exams to get a recommend, the more I dread it. I already have my Rec permit. I did ok on that but had to re-write the nav portion. To sum it up I'm scared stiff for some strange reason. I've written many exams for school and career but this is different for some reason. Anyone feel this? Any advice from someone who has used harm's air and written the real exam would be most welcome. Any advice on how to study I'm I will be writing in the next 40 days?

Perhaps its the huge amount of material with harves air i find overwhelming. I wish I could narrow it down a little. I mean there is even a portion on Interpersonal relationships.

It is pretty normal, when you come closer to your exam you should focus more on a question bank study or test simulation where you take question related with your PPL course and you try to answer it.

[JasonE]

Wrote mine today. Not as bad as you might think.... I only need 2 of the 3 hrs to write.

Took advantages of my new privileges tonight and took the family for a ride!

[CYOOpilot]

Currently preparing to write mine this summer and am using Harvs for my practise exams and everything. I agree its a ridiculous amount of stuff to know so me and a friend went through the whole thing and made notes on it simplifying some of the topics according to input we got from other pilots and instructors. Its a good way to go because when Harvs expires (which it does extremely quickly and its expensive) you still have the notes with all the info.
Also not sure if anyone has said this yet but im using the sharper edge 2015 exam prep guide as a supplement to Harvs. (I find it more straight forward)

I hear its a bit of an english test with the way the questions are presented!

[JasonE]

Of the few questions I got wrong....I think most of them were due to wording. RTQ²!!

[HiFlyChick]

One thing to always keep in mind is time. A lot of people simply run out of time because they are so focused on getting absolutely every single question correct. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't aim for that, but keep in mind that every question is worth the same, so if you have two questions and one will take you 10 minutes to do and the other will take you 10 seconds, do the short one first and leave the long one until the very end. What I have found works best is I do a sweep through the entire exam (regardless of which exam - PPL CPL, ATPL, etc) answering all of the questions that I immediately know the answer to, or any one that I know I can figure out less than a minute. This also means the ones that I think I know the answer but want to re-confirm later - answer them, bookmark them and then check them if there's time. On the second sweep through answer the ones that you think you can do, but that take a bit of time due to calculations (so long as they don't take 15 mins or something). On the third pass, make sure you answer absolutely everything, even if you're guessing - again, bookmark them and come back if there's time. The worst thing to do is to run out of time and not even taken a guess - it's not like there's any penalty for a wrong answer over one that has no answer. I personally almost always take all of the time for an exam, because you can just keep going back over the ones that you are unsure of and have taken a guess on, and either try to recalculate or maybe just sit and think about what they are asking.

The big thing is to not panic. I remember one exam that I wrote (might have been my CPL) and whichever topic was first in the question list happened to be my weakest, so I read the first question and didn't know the answer. Then I read the second question and didn't know the answer. By the time I read the third question and only vaguely had an idea of what the answer might be I was in full panic mode so I stopped, ate some chocolate easter eggs (the examiner told me I could only take them in if I gave her some first ) and breathed deeply a few times. Then I just skipped over the bad ones, started whipping through the ones I knew and could answer right away and came back to the hard few questions afterwards.

One thing is that I never tell anyone I am going to write an exam (except my husband, who is wonderfully encouraging and supportive) until after it's over and I've passed. You don't need the extra pressure of feeling embarrassed if you fail.

Do your best and don't worry about it...

[jump154]

+1 to what HiFlyChick wrote - added advantage is often the answer to a question is given in a later question - or at least a big hint towards the answer. Helps a lot.

[PropToFeather]

HiFlyChick pretty much nailed it. In fact, that's the process I've used on every test since PPL, and it hasn't failed me yet. The one thing I disagree with - and this is subjective - don't use the whole time if all you're doing is re-guessing at a couple of questions. Review ones you're not sure about, sure, but don't obsess over them.

Personally, I find that, if you've got Harv's under your belt and have gone through (and understood) the questions and what they're trying to ask, you should be fine. Make sure you've got a clear head coming into the exam, too, I've seen too many people think it's fine to party the night before a TC exam come back from said exam disappointed.

Oh, and one more thing: you get scrap paper. It's not gold flecked, you don't have to pay for it. Use it! Sometimes, all it takes to solve a question is to either write or draw the info they're giving you to see what they want.

[The Forbidden Fruit]

Finally felt ready to write the Exam until TC failed to mail me my class 3 medical. Very very slow. My club won't let me write until i have it. I'm going to continue doing these practice exams and hope my medical will arrive next week. Thanks for all the tips Any other study tips welcome.

[hoserjoe]

Any advice on how to study I'm I will be writing in the next 40 days?

Free Canadian, US, and AME self-testing exams are at http://www.aerotransport.com/

[Kejidog]

I wrote mine last week. Found the cheesy dos looking interface the worst part of the whole process.I made the mistake of second guessing myself on a few and ended with an 85 overall. My worst marks were the general knowledge section. Met and Nav were my best. I think I studied the hardest for these sections and basically blew the General due to my overconfidence and rereading the answers too quickly. I finished in under two hours and took about 20 min checking my answers. I did it start to finish without skipping any answers because the software seemed so lousy. Just my two cents, now I need to start building hours.

[ZaSz]

Also, for those that know French, you can switch from English to French any time, it helps with some questions that are sometimes worded poorly in one language or another.