Thursday 21 January 2010

First 7 ATPL exams results

Two weeks since we were in Gatwick seating our first seven ATPL exams. It goes by fairly quick when we go through the same routine everyday, having already started the lectures for the second half of ATPL subjects.
However, when it comes to waiting for exams results, this is just way too slow.
At last, we got them today!

Anyway, I'm really happy with the results, I've got 90% average, passed all seven of them, and can now fully concentrate on the next 7 subjects.

I got 86% in Principles of Flight, 100% in Mass&Balance, 89% in Aircraft Performance, 96% in Operational Procedures, 94% in Flight Planning, 85% in Meteorology and 82% in Human Performance and Limitations (which happens to be the most borring subject ever and has very little to do with aviation).
Keep looking ahead as they say. I should be flying again from next week onwards, plenty of good images in the head right now !

Here are some pictures I took this morning at Bournemouth Airport:






And some pictures I took last year onboard a 737-800 across Europe.
(take-off from Bournemouth EGHH)




Tuesday 12 January 2010

First 7 exams in Gatwick

Happy New Year everyone !
I didn't get a chance to say it before as this is my first post since last year, actually all this went really fast! I'm just back from Gatwick where I took my first seven ATPL exams.
It's really hard to say whether I did well, I just hope so but overall I think I passed them all. Lets hope, at least.
We started with Principles of Flight last tuesday, not an easy one since the questions asked are wider than what the book covers. It's a mix with commun sence, theoretical knowledge and what we learn during the lectures. The exam is only 1 hour long but time isn't an issue, at least not for that one. The afternoon we had Mass & Balance followed by Aircraft Performance. Mass & Balance is fairly straightforward. You learn the formula, and that's pretty much it. Performance requires a bit more thinking and some stuff looks rather similar to what we do in PoF.
Wenesday was probably the toughest day, starting with Operational Procedures which really is learning by heart loads of figures, such as how many megaphones must your aircraft have with such number of seats and such layout, it also covers LVPs (Low Visibily Procedures), CAT I/II/III A B and C landings, circling approaches minima, ETOPS Operations (Extended Range Twin-Engine Operational Performance Standards), and flight hazards. Our instructor (ex Boeing 757 captain) made it all very interesting, but when it comes to passing an exam, it looks huge to learn all this by heart.

The afternoon we had Flight Planning, and we basically spent three hours opening huge charts on our small desks, looking for waypoints, airfield and navigation facilities ...
Not that it was really tough but three hours was just enough and I finished like 1 minute before the end.

Meteorology on thursday and, finally, Human Performance & Limitations (HP&L) on friday. It definitely was a busy week! I took the pictures from my room's window in the hotel we stayed at. At least, I had the view.