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Hiya Everyone! For various reasons, my blog has now moved to www.thetraineepilot.weebly.com so check it out to continue hearing how I am getting on!

Week 7- Mock exams and CBT's

Evening Everyone and welcome to a new blog post,

So what to tell you about this week? Well at the start of the week our course had our mock exams for Module 1. CTC require us to pass these before we are allowed to sit the real ones. This is because the Civil Aviation Authority only allows us 6 sittings to pass all 14 exams; if we don't then we have to start the whole of groundschool again! 

It was interesting to see whether the work I had been doing since the start of the module was enough to pass. I'm pleased to say that I managed to pass the mocks and now with the real tests just a few days away, it's time for the last few bits of revision before a much needed weekend off after the exams. 

The last few days has been spent revising the topics I am still not comfortable with as well as doing some group revision. The mocks were definitely helpful in highlighting the areas of the 4 topics I still need to work on.

Sorry for such a short update but not really much else to talk about! Anyway, I hope to be blogging next week with 4 passes under my belt and only 10 exams to go; so with that it's back to the textbooks! 

Week 6- Finishing General Navigation

Afternoon Readers,

This week we have finally finished GNAV; another monumental topic requiring the intake of a huge amount of information. Despite being called GNAV, you don't really do any navigation at all; in fact only the last day on the subject was spent plotting lines on charts to find your position! Below is a picture of a Lambert Conformal Chart; just one of the types of charts we use in General Navigation. Dependent on what latitudes you are flying in determines which sort of chart you need. The world is made up of airways which are like motorways for aircraft. We have each been given a Jeppesen Manual containing maps for different parts of the world. 

A chart showing the airspace in Ireland
 (although it seems to be upside-down!)

I think Henry has had enough!

At the end of last week it felt like GNAV was going to beat me but I think I may be on the way to cracking it...finally! We sit our mock exams tomorrow and Tuesday and providing all goes to plan, our real exams the following week. I can't believe I'm about to take my first set of exams; where has the time gone?!

Luckily we were only in school for 3 days this week so the other days have been spent consolidating the information and doing practice questions to see if we really do know the topics! At the start of the course, the Chief Theoretical Knowledge Instructor at CTC told us that the best way to revise was group revision. I was previously used to just revising on my own for A levels but doing group revision here is really good. It takes you a fraction of the time to find out things that you don't know by asking someone else as opposed to looking it up. Over the past few days, a few group sessions have taken place and I have found them extremely helpful! Unfortunately I think all this revision is going to make me quite fat what with the 'revision food' I am eating! 

Anyway, quite a short update this week as not really too much to say but I am pleased to announce that Joe has finally learnt how to spell easyJet.... Well done Joe!