Studying for EASA IR exams

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

Be careful though when quoting Peter in your local flying club / flying school. You will not make a lot of friends :-)

It's just funny to see how the aviation world is full of "personalities", teaching stupid things, like: GPS cannot be used for navigation, IFR in a light aircraft is useless, etc etc.

Doing these exams at age 30/40 is one thing - anybody well above this?

I recently wrote a couple of articles for PPL/IR magazine about getting the IR, which may already be available on their web site. It took me about 4-5 months to do the studies and exams. I used CATS backed up by aviationexam.com. Incidentally, if you want to go with CATS, there is a very good discount for PPL/IR members. You'd be well advised to join for several reasons, but the CATS TK discount offer is a no-brainer.

Doing these exams at age 30/40 is one thing - anybody well above this?

I know at least 2 people in their 60s who have successfully passed these exams. One of them even did all 7 in one day, although he ended up having to retake one of them.

I don't think the exams are intellectually hard - especially as one can do them using the QB.

For example I never really read the Air Law and Met study material. I skimmed it once and saw it was nearly all irrelevant garbage. I just sat the QB exams about 35 times, for each of these two subjects...

What makes the JAA IR hard for existing IFR pilots is the sheer obvious in-your-face politically motivated and totally false need for it. It was a private project by a bunch of America-haters in EASA, which was skilfully driven through the system, including misleading the Transport Committee into voting for it. And when you get to the exams, and see the garbage in there... Of course one can do it. But it is such a waste of time.

For an ab initio IR student the uselessness is less obvious but it is still there, because the fresh JAA IR holder cannot use it to fly anywhere. He/she can fly classical IFR procedures but that is just a small part of using the IR. It takes a lot of contacts with other pilots to learn the necessary stuff.

In the past, I think it is true that most present-day IFR pilots learnt most of what they know from the internet. That is certainly true for me, and I know for a fact that it is also true for many "old hands" I know. But those internet sites have become useless over the past few years, due to useless moderation, resulting in all kinds of abuse. That is one reason why EuroGA was set up...

PPL/IR is a good resource - as well as a very good cause to support - and I am a member too, but no more than about 50 people ever read it (it's not free!) and only a few ever write anything on it.

My experience was that getting a fairly consistent 85% on the QB exams (which take about 30 mins to do each) will get you a pass in everything. I listed my exam scores in my writeup.

The short exams like the 24-question HP&L will be more variable because you need to get only a few wrong to fail, or you can get 100%.

My strategy was the same as Peter's - 85% in three consecutive tests, then move onto the next subject. With the aviationexam QB, this generally resulted in an actual exam grade of above 90%. On average I needed to do around 50% of the QB to achieve the 85% consistently.

The aviationexam app has some very useful features that show you, for example, the weakest areas within a subject so you can focus your attention on them.

It also has a link from each question to an explanation of the answer. Sometimes the explanation is tailored to the specific question (e.g. if there is a catch) but often it is a generic explanation of the topic. Still useful though, in the main.

The CATS discount for PPL/IR members is I think around 50% of the fee, so will cover several years' membership. The forum used to be the only European place to ask technical questions about IFR flight and get useful answers. EuroGA now provides an alternative but with extras (and there are several forumites of dual citizenship, as it were) but it remains a useful resource. Many of the questions on this thread are answered in more detail in my magazine article, for example.

I used aviationexam in studymode (great explanations). I worked through each sub-subject until i got 70-80% Finally i did a mocktest until i got atleast 80-90% in each subject. Results on the CAA test were in the range 90-95%. Not rocket science but still hard work learning all the stuff in combination with work.

If you want to become a preacher you have to know very well in which book, chapter, verse, etc. something is written!