Podcast Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Aaron Henriques: And everyone today's been a bit of a hectic day. And in fact, you know, what, the last week has been a bit of a hectic week it's been a mixture of people dropping subjects and, you know, crazy results in our class as well. And spending a fortune on question banks. And I want to talk about all of that today.
[00:00:22] The last week, it's been really, really crazy. You know, it's been, I've been trying to get my night rating finished and that's been something that's been really difficult to do. So I had seven, seven bookings put in over the last couple of weeks and all seven had been canceled due to the weather. All seven, the planes are barely getting off the.
[00:00:46] Here at Stapleford at the moment this you had named storms three weeks in a row, which is apparently unprecedented, and now we've got another one coming this weekend, but it doesn't affect me so much because I'm off for my exams. But I know there's lots of people you get to get flying people trying to do an IRR and CPL and all sorts.
[00:01:06] But yeah, so th that's been a bit of a challenge and the worry that I have with that is. What is it now? It's about five or six weeks since my last night flight. And I've got to go off and finish my cross-country nav at night. And I've also got to finish my solo circuits. But before that, I'm going to have to go up because of.
[00:01:32] A new instructor again, booked in for the next few weeks. I think I'm on sort of like my fourth instructor now. Just because they'd really trying to get slots of me at any point they possibly can. They're trying to slap me in with any. Just so I can get it done because we're coming towards the end of the night season.
[00:01:49] In fact, we've only got a few more weeks before nights. We'll stop at Stapleford anyway, and then you have to go somewhere like south end, where you can still do your nights, but the landing fees are extortionate. Yeah. So fingers crossed going to be able to get that done, but really the you know, the, the, the reason why I was sort of come on today is because I spent the whole time.
[00:02:13] In class studying and I've been considering dropping subjects over the last week or so. It's, you know, we've all had to take performance reviews, like performance tests and progress tests, sorry. And we had to take mock finals and then final exams and the results have been really mixed in our, you know, And you know, my class and for my own results as well, they've been a bit sort of, you know, all over the place in certain subjects, but it's something that, you know, a lot of people don't realize that when you actually book your exams with a CAA, you can change your exams.
[00:02:59] You can cancel them, you can change them around as long as you do that seven days before the exam. And the problem is we did the majority of our final progress tests are our final tests for our subjects in module one, six days before the real test start. So that's obviously a problem because the CAA they want seven days at a minimum, or you lose your fee basically.
[00:03:24] And that's about 73 pounds at the time of recording doubt. There's lots of things. In my class in talking about dropping subjects. And I'm not just talking about people who are really struggling. I'm talking about people who have been excelling in every way. I've been talking about dropping certain subjects.
[00:03:42] They can touch up on ones that they're maybe not so confident on. Now we had a crazy class average demo day on principals. It was insane. I mean, when I finished that test, I was like someone, I might as well as like, had I even been in, in class ever, you know, I got 44% and I looked here and I, I had to laugh at myself.
[00:04:11] I was like, that's ridiculous, Aaron, what the hell have you done? And then I found out the class average was about 40% on our principles of flight to. And I'm not really sure why, apparently it's very common that, you know, the class as a whole will get a very low result. And there's only one person in our class who actually passed that exam.
[00:04:35] We have over 65%, that's what they class, as a pass during these progress tests. Yeah, it was a bit shocking, really. And it was something that really, I was, I was on the edge with principles of flight and I thinking, well, I don't really get it. Should I be taking the exam because we're doing all of our exams in free settings.
[00:04:58] There are free more settings that I could use to take those exams. But the biggest problem is if I put it back to the end of this course, I've got what, four, five months without studying it, I'm going to forget it. And I got to be in a worse position than I. But there is at least one person that has dropped it already.
[00:05:20] They've canceled the exam. There are a couple of others who are looking at canceling principles of flight or human performance, a couple looking at canceling the VFR and IFR communications tests. And that's all because people really want to concentrate on, you know, what they're seeing as the hardest subjects really.
[00:05:41] And that's the same for me too. So. Well, I thought I do. And what I actually did do is after I saw that 40% or 44% that I got, I was four. Do you know what? I've only got three or four days between that test and the final, or that's not really a fine, it's not the real exam, but the final principles of flight exam.
[00:06:06] And I thought, do you know what, let me just wait until. See it, see what, see what comes with that. And then I'll make my decision if I have to cancel it and lose my 73 pounds then. So what, so then when I did the final tests, I got 81% and that's like above what they want, what they want is 65% for these tests.
[00:06:32] I got 81% in principles of flight. And I was shocked because actually when I did the exam, I don't know if maybe. Know, if I had a few lucky finger strikes of, you know, pressing a, when I had really had no idea and just taking a guess, I'm not really sure, but across the board, you know, human performance, I got 85% IFR, 95 VFR 91 principles of flight 18.
[00:06:59] Mass balance 88 and the only sort of concerning one really was meteorology, which was 70, which they still class the path, but the rate exams, they need 75%. So across the board, the scores that I got were, you know, were okay. They're, they're, they're, they're good, I guess. But like could definitely be improved and I don't think any of them are necessarily in the back now at the time of recording this.
[00:07:26] Well, Thursday night and my exams are on Monday morning, this Monday coming up and I literally just spent the last gosh, what is it? 13 hours doing principles of flight on the banks. And we had extra tuition this morning as well. Yeah. So that's actually another thing we actually asked one of the tutors to get some extra tuition.
[00:07:55] You and he's really good. And he is, you know, gave up some of his spare time where he's given us two hours over three days to brush up. Core areas like controls and stability that people are really struggling on asymmetric and high-speed flight. And also mass ma we're looking at mass balancing and aerodynamic balancing as well.
[00:08:18] And that's something he, he helped us out with. And there's, you know, about half the class attended those extra tuition sessions. But you know, there's, there's been lots of hours put into this studying and. I'm still. So on the edge, you know, meteorology, I did the last 208 for anyone who was doing your ATPL as you probably heard the last 200 some of the banks, the last 200 are actually more than 200, but it is what it is.
[00:08:44] And you know, we've met, I was getting 76%. That's so borderline, you know that that's one, one more question wrong and that'd be a foul. So that's something that I really gonna have to hammer in, but I just don't have much time left. And so I've heard a lot on the Facebook group. People refer to it as the Facebook group, as in like, it's the only one, but I think it's the biggest one.
[00:09:15] And it's actually run by Adam who's here. He's the founder of it, but it's got about 10,000 students on there and. On there, but a lot of people have been saying about ATPL questions prior to coming here. I went and bought Bristol ground school. We'd paid for I don't even use it. What's it called?
[00:09:35] ETPL online. I bought ATPL GS and today I was convinced to buy a fourth question bank and I don't know if it's going to be any good, but I thought. Are aggressive if I don't do it, which is ATPL questions. And that's because the amount of people in the Facebook group who've been coming out of their exams recently saying get ETPL questions because literally everything that in their exam is coming up also in HPL questions.
[00:10:05] My thing hasn't ever been to complete the bank. In fact, I know when. Completing the bank. Some of the fellow students on my course, they've completed it more than once, and I don't know how they've done it because on individual topics is like 1400 questions or something. And how they're doing now and completing multiple banks.
[00:10:27] I don't know. They must work at a crazy rate compared to me, or have this crazy attention span. I definitely don't have you know, I've probably done about 20. Of the banks. So my thing has really been about focusing on trying to understand the material more than the banks and using the banks to sort of reinforce my knowledge or highlight any gaps I may have.
[00:10:51] But this week is all about the last 200, because it's not about me trying to learn the answers to these individual questions is actually about seeing what's been coming up recently. What topics are they highlighting or are they more focused on recently so that I can you know, really just focus in on those, in those areas where if there's any weakness so I can study those.
[00:11:14] Just so that I can get in there and hopefully pass and some times, because right now, if I, if I got a 75% on principles of flight, I'd be so happy. So happy whenever, you know, the majority of the questions, the theory, the really wordy questions that actually a lot of my clients actually struggle with, which is I find quite odd, like even the guys that you know, that they're getting top marks in everything, but for somebody that they don't necessarily.
[00:11:41] Have a way to like model things in their mind. They, they use the maps to verify things. Whereas I model things in my mind, but where it's just pure math questions, I really struggled with them. In fact, as I, as was highlighted today, I literally don't know any of the any of the equations. It's, it's ridiculous.
[00:12:01] I mean, there's so many equations. They all look very sad. They will do different things. And I like, well, I don't really know. But thankfully I'm praying to God. Although I'm going to spend half a day Monday evening after my metrology exam, because I've got principles of flight the day after that Monday evening, I'm going to spend time doing some of these mass questions to hopefully.
[00:12:29] Get, you know, a couple of them jumped into my head. Apparently there's not many in the red exam, sort of four or five actual mass questions. The majority are wordy questions. So fingers crossed is enough wordy ones that I get that will help me pass through this. But in terms of anyone else out there doing their ATPL hours, if you're doing it, distance learning, I think you're mad.
[00:12:54] I don't know how you do. You're at, you're an insane person. You must be superhuman because I'm doing this every day without any stress in my life. As in like, I don't have family, I don't have, you know, mortgage to pay or anything like that. And just here at the school every day in the class and study in the evenings and I'm still really struggling.
[00:13:15] So, you know, hats off to all you guys and girls out there who are doing it differently. And that's it for now? Like I said, next week, I'm going to be completely silent because that's where my exams were really exams are at Gatwick. I'm going to premiere in on where is it? London road. I think it's the London road premiere in Gatwick.
[00:13:39] And I'll be staying there from Sunday night until Thursday. And I'll be sitting my. We tried to exam on Monday morning principles, a flight on Tuesday morning, then I've got massive balance and VFR comes on Wednesday morning and afternoon. And then I've. Human factors and performance on Thursday, along with IFR cons.
[00:14:14] So that's me. Hopefully I'll come back with some good news and I'll be going into mode two without having to do any retakes, but let's see because will know that it's quite common for people having to do If you've recently done your exams, you know, get in touch with me because I'd like to hear you know, how you found it really and what you did to what your study sort of a plan was because I'm a bit all over the place.
[00:14:41] You know, I've been looking at what other people are doing, particularly top performance. How is it they study. And, you know, I've, I haven't really seen anything that particularly works. I've just reverted back to what I've always done. You know, read my notes, my handwritten notes. Do some questions, go back and read anything.
[00:15:01] I didn't understand. I mean, I don't really know if there's another way, but that's what I do anyway. So. If you want to get in contact with me, you can get in contact with me on either Instagram or Facebook. In fact, and it's AaronHenray on both that's AaronHenray. On both of them. We can contact me at Aaron aaronhenriques.com.
[00:15:24] If there's anything you want me to talk about, take care of them.
