Exam Day Air Navigation & Flight Planning
After many weeks of night classes I booked the Air Navigation & Flight Planning exam, the third of six theory exams required for attaining your PPL (Private Pilots License) in NZ.
This exam covers a lot of Subjects:
Fundamentals of Air Navigation
- Form of the Earth
- Direction on the Earth
- Distance on the Earth
- Speed
- Position Referencing
- Altimetry
- Principles and Terminology
- Time
- Triangle of Velocities
Aeronautical Maps and Charts
- Properties and Principles
- Map Reading
Circular Slide Rule (E6B)
- Computations
Mental Dead (Deduced) Reckoning
- In-flight Revisions
Flight Planning
- Route Selection
- Map Preparation
- Plan Preparation
- Fuel Planning
- Load Planning
Visual Navigation Procedures
- Flight Management
- Special Procedures
I booked this exam at my local Aspeq Examination Centre for Tuesday 27 July.
This exam was a 25 question 70 minute multi-choice online exam. This sounds easy until you realise that every incorrect question is 4% off.
For this exam I studied long and hard as I had difficulty with the dreaded E6B Flight Computer along with some other subjects. Again I was quite nervous going into this one as there seems to be a tendency in the exam structure to trip up candidates. Well that’s my take on the way questions could be rather “obscure” or taken two ways.
The exam itself was “fair” in that I got only 2 obscure questions where the answers were so close that it was more of an exercise in how good is your eyesight rather than how well do you know the methodology. One question in particular had me choosing options where the values were within 2 of each other. On the E6B this equated to 2 ultra close black lines about 1mm apart. No E6B is that accurate so bad question there CAA.
Some questions were designed to really test your knowledge. I used logic and safety first as my mantra on the harder questions. Like all previous exams, I stayed until 1 min from the end going over and over my answers. I had to wait 24hrs for the results to come up on my profile but I was pleased to pass. but was a bit disappointed with myself for scrapping thru with a mark of 79% After checking on the sections in which I didn’t do well, I was slightly off on all the five minor questions I tagged.
Great to get this third exam done. Next cab off the rank is “Aircraft Technical Knowledge”. I read heaps of books so hopefully something in this area has sunken in over the years and I will breeze thru it. (Yeah Right!)
Until next time….
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