Studying for EASA IR exams

When we all sat down for the Met theory exam at Gatwick the examiner said

'this is everyones favorite exam, I see you all keep coming back for more'

Actually its not bad at all, good luck.

I finished my fATPL theory exams a few weeks ago, but obviously I missed a thing...What do you mean by "TK" and "QB"?

I did the EASA IR theory last winter (started around this time, finished in Jan/Feb). For MET specifically, if you understand the basic principles regarding adiabatic processes, lapse rates and pressures it is possible to actually find the most correct answer to many questions.

With that said, many questions are unbelievable stupid. I spent many hours using avationexam.com, doing 85-100% of the available questions in the QB and used their explanations to understand why. With that setup I passed the tests with results >90%.

Good luck!

I had a suspicion concerning "QB" :-) ...

As the previous poster mentioned, understanding some basic principles helps a lot when studying Met. Some things I considered very interesting (clouds, global wind systems, icing ...), but two thirds of the questions are absolute rubbish. Met and Gen Nav are the subjects that are most in need of a thorough clearing up of the syllabus, in my opinion.

I used "Exam eAcademy" for the distance part of learning and "Exam11" for going through the questions. Both programs seem to be very common here in Austria/Germany. The QB was astonishingly accurate, I can really recommend it.

The "eAcademy", however,was rather disappointing - especially the sometimes terrible translations from German into English. I therefore used the Oxford books for the more difficult and/or interesting topics.

I did the JAA IR as a conversion from the FAA IR, with the exams in 2011 and the final IR test in Jan 2012.

The whole process was written up in this rather long article. In there, however, are probably some useful tips on the exams. The QB is not for blind learning of the answers (one can't really; in > 90% of cases) but it is good for getting some understanding of the subject quickly, and is good for learning the exam writer's psychology.

I consider the JAA IR theory to be at least 90% garbage and of zero relevance to flying, but it will depend to some degree of where you are coming from. If you have no IFR flying knowledge then you need to learn "something" but you would be far better served reading the single ASA book on the FAA IR exam. In fact some of the US private pilot IFR flying books are even better for practical stuff (Collins and others). And if you have that knowledge, and you actually fly IFR, the JAA IR TK is nearly all absolute crap. And the reason this situation has carried on for so long is because nearly all the candidates never use it; they are going for the ATPL and they hope to end up in a big jet RHS, with a good pilot in the LHS who makes sure they don't screw up. And a 737 or similar is a hugely capable plane, all but unaffected by icing, with radar, and a high enough ceiling to outclimb any wx other than a CB. So the fact that the RHS has learnt a load of bollocks about different types of fronts etc etc doesn't matter....

Today, for private IFR, what matters is knowing how to get wx data from the internet and understand it.

You will never outperform a forecaster who does it 24/7 and gets paid for it. Sure he/she will screw up - many times - but they will not screw up anywhere near as much as you will if you try the "amateur brain surgeon" approach which the JAA IR TK tries to give you.

I have not yet met a private pilot who was able to give me a single example of how the JAA IR met theory helped him to make an important decision - which could not have been made on the basic of the most blindingly obvious look at the MSLP chart and 1 or 2 other sources. Lots of people say it is very useful but none have been able to be specific.

This is a very bad state of affairs because wx is the biggest technical factor that affects flying, especially IFR and especially Eurocontrol IFR which is done at a high altitude at which all kinds of things can bite you. But it will never change - all the time 99% of the FTO industry output is heading for a jet RHS.

The other IR topics are mostly bull too, with probably HP&L getting the 1st prize for bollocks contents.

Air Law is incredibly tedious and also full of crap. Each subject came from a different country, and AL was reportedly done by a Portugese ATCO. Hence all the stupid questions about departure separation when operating two parallel runways x metres apart.

The material originates from the 1970s and it was obsolete back then.

Just my opinion of course

On the plus side, the actual UK CAA exams didn't contain any of the really ambiguous QB questions. Quite obviously, somebody in the CAA went through them and chucked out the bad ones. So the QBs do give a bad impression of what is in there. However, some countries have not done this and you may really get all the crap.

The reason why CATS is the most recommended ground school FTO is explained in my writeup. Basically their homework is also based on the QB, and this has to be done to some standard otherwise the FTO won't sign you off as ready for the exam - a nice bit of European revenue generation practice. If you go to say GTS (where I went) their homework is very different from the QB so you have to learn a whole lot more 1970s garbage.

All what Peter has said above on this subject is 100% correct.

For a rough time frame.

I did the ATPL exams not just the IR ones so adjust as you see fit.

I used Bristol GS and followed their plan as published.

Mod 1:
G nav
Met
Flight Planning
HPL
Instruments
VFR Comms
IFR Comms
M&B

Mod 2:
AGK
PoF
Performance
Air Law
Operational Proc
Radio NAv

I started in October with mod 1 and sat the exams at the start of Feburary. I was ready to do them in January but I didnt like that there was a prolonged period of time between the brush up and the exams so I postponed to Feb.

I started Mod 2 studying in March and sat the exams in May. I felt the time span was appropriate and I would not have needed longer but would not have liked much less time.

For general advice, I read the the material quite in depth. Where I didn't understand something I researched it and developed my understanding beyond what was required. I maintained this when I went on to using the QB for practice. I refused to accept and answer "because it is" and made myself go and find out why and understand it. This does not include a select number of questions which logic does not apply to.

Doing this, I managed to achieve and average mark of over 95% and I was able to also help other students (from my local flying club and also online) with certain problems because I forced myself to understand as much as I could.

A real quick edit just to add that I am not by any means super smart and I achieved very average if not slightly below average results at school, but if you put the effort in...