Tomorrow, They Start..

Tomorrow marks the start of the first set of external JAA ATPL exams; these are the exams which essentially go towards the flying license.

These are the most important ones that the prospective airlines will look at.

I have done as much revision as I can; and now I will have to go for it. I am nervous, but at the same time I feel a real sense of drive and motivation to tackle these exams head on.

A good night's sleep is second to nothing before an exam for me; so it's the end of the day.

Tomorrow begins the trial..

Sleepless Nights..

Yesterday I managed to consume in excess of four cups of fresh coffee in a matter of a few hours. As a result I was feeling very antsy indeed. I struggled to sit at my desk for any length of time; so much so that I had to get out of the house.

I concluded that I would benefit a change of scenery and went to a local Costa Coffee shop to revise from my books. Needless to say, I found myself ordering another coffee.

The rest of the day was equally unproductive.

I tried to get an early night's sleep to make the most of today. Unfortunately I struggled to get to sleep for most of the night; I guess I had had too much coffee over the course of the day.

With the exams tomorrow I am trying to get myself firing on all cylinders for the week's onslaught. I can't wait..

Errands to Run..

Today I had to run an errand; this is quite a big deal considering my life has been confined to revising, eating and sleeping for the past two weeks.

I had spent some time last week trying to sort out the council tax for our house; I had asked the flight school to fax through confirmation that we are students and don't need to pay tax. Today when I called, it turns out that the fax had never been received.

Great, so this meant I had to go and sort it out in person; a welcome excuse to get out of the house.

I arrive at the reception desk at the council tax office. A rather plump, late middle aged woman calls me forward. I explain to her the problem. I hand over the Attendance Letter to her for to photocopy. As she is stood at the photocopier she looks back at me and pauses.

Looking over the top of her glasses she says
- "Really, you don't look like a pilot"

Slightly caught off guard I reply
- "Really, why is that?"
- "You look too casual"
- "Well, we've got exams on at the moment and we are pretty much in solitary confinement..!"

Since the beginning of the intense study period, I have neglected shaving as it eats into valuable revision or sleep time. As a result I have grown a very thick beard over the past few weeks. And seeing as I rarely have to leave the house my long surf hair was rather unkemp.

It's probably a good thing she didn't see that I was wearing my pyjamas under my jeans..

You can also follow me on Twitter[@cadethawk]; if you 'Tweet', or not..

Almost a Week to Go..

Yesterday was a short day of revision; I revised a subject that I was fairly confident with. Rather than really pushing forward, I worked slowly in well thought out way.

By the evening I was very very bored of it all and decided to call it a day fairly early. I managed a nice 12 hours sleep.

Today I am working whilst listening to/watching the Blair Iraq Inquiry. There is quite a lot going on so my revision is going to be fraught with distractions. The BBC are streaming a live stream(1 minute delay) of the Inquiry all day on their website. I wish I was in london and not here revising for these exams..

Back to work..

Stress..

This marks revision day 6. I have lost track of time completely now. There was a point when I knew what day of the week it was; but now having been sat in front of my computer all day for the past few days, I find myself having to check my diary every so often to remind myself.

There has been a slow increase of stress within the house; my housemates have been feeling the increasing pressure as time has gone by with revision schedules slowly slipping further and further by the wayside. One housemate passed his breaking point and returned home as the pressure was beginning to mount.

I'm not sure why, but this level of stress hasn't hit me. It's not as though I am feeling complacent; rather I have been through the practice questions once over already. With still four days of revision to go, I can say I am ahead of the schedule I had set myself. Rather than stress I am becoming increasingly bored with the material.

Despite not having even started the exams, I am well and truly suffering from 'Last Exam Syndrome'; for all of you that have been through university will know exactly what I am talking about. I just want to get them over and done with..

I have ambled my way through another day; there is so little to do in between bouts of revision. Being indoors all day, with no human contact is very very depressing.

I sincerely hope this is not what the flight deck is going to be like..

Revision Day 5..

Today I managed to finish going through all of the remaining questions in the question bank. After a quick break I was back at it, starting from the beginning again to help drum the information in.

When I think back to my time at University, it was alot of hard work; long days in the labs, long nights in the computer rooms, endless days in the libraries and constant stress around exams. Then the time invested and the effort applied did not necessarily equate to progress. Whereas this, I really do feel that as I go over more and more questions, I am getting closer and closer to ironing out the mistakes.

This is going to be a very stressful week coming; but once it is over; I have a great two week break to look forward to and I am going to make the most of it..!!

Revision Day 4..

Another early start for me, as I power through the questions.

I do feel as though I am making progress, albeit fairly slowly, hopefully I can get it done before the exams.

At times I am finding it extremely difficult to concetrate on the work and am easily distracted by anything and everything that isn't revision based.

In an effort to make my revision more productive I have tried to increase my levels of Omega-3 by having Cod Liver Oil tablets and eating more fish; in the form of fish fingers. However, since adopting this regime I have noticed that I carry a faint smell of plasticine..!

I may have to rethink this..

Revision Day 3..

Today spelt the third day out of nine allocated for revising for the external exams.

What this has entailed is trudging through the exam question bank to practice all of the questions which may come up. This is no small task as there are in excess of 4,500 questions in the banks for the upcoming seven exams.

So, for all of us, considering the time constraints before the exams, has meant waking up at the crack of dawn to get in front of our computers to practice the online material.

It has been almost non-stop, with meals being taken in front of the computers to allow multi-tasking.

Every so often I find myself getting distracted, by friends on facebook, twitter and the like; so occasionally I 'have a break'.

If you have taken a driving theory test in the UK then you will understand what the tests are like. A question with four possible answers; although the correct answer isn't as glaring as that in the driving test.

I am currently averaging about 11hrs in front of my computer working; this is definitely the dullest part of flight school so far. Not something they make mention of in the prospectuses.

We march on..

Externals..

Yesterday was the final day of the internal exams. There were three exams to be taken. The first was the of the most concern, the remaining two would be very similar and not too much of a struggle; apparently the record for completing those exams is 2.5mins.

The exams were completed without too much trouble. With these exams, there is usually plenty of time to complete them, so once you have answered all of the questions in the way you think is right, there is very little use in sitting in the exam room mulling over your selections.

Needless to say that the final two were completed in an expeditious manner, with plenty of time to spare.

Next was the waiting for results; they were to be issued by 1300hrs; with the time only being 1130hrs thsi would mean an agonising wait.

The time passed and we went to collect our results; we were told that there had been a delay and they would be available from 1330hrs. After this further wait, as I went to get my results I could feel the sinking feeling. If I had to do any retakes then this would delay my revision for the external exams and could possibly mean being re-coursed to the one below. At this point the my only want was to have passed.

I received my results slip, my heart was racing; I opened up the page to reveal my results. I had passed everything with a happy margin. I had cleared BA's threshold of 85% average. What a relief..!

Now to prepare for the external exams..

Almost There..

Today was the first day of Phase 1 School finals, four exams over the course of the day with little to almost no breaks in between.

The exams were as tough as we had expected with a wide range of material from the beginning to the end being assessed.

I feel completely spent from the day's mental exersion but have had to come home and continue studying for tomorrow's exams. Two of those are Communications, which should prove to be slightly easier, but the remaining exam is supposed to be a rock hard one.

I am so so sick of the relentless revision that has taken over my life over the past few weeks. The worst bit is, there is still plenty to come.

Back to the books..

The Eleventh Hour..

It is the night before the first of our two days of Final Internal Exams for phase one; what this means is whether or not we are eligible to be candidates for the external licensing exams.

It has been a very very long day of studying and revising; up at the crack of dawn and working non-stop with no breaks other than for food.

Right now, my head is thumping and I feel drained. I really want to go to sleep and get some rest before the exams, but there is still so much that can be done.

The fear has definitely arrived, although I am yet to receive the butterflies. I am feeling very nervous about tomorrow. It is 4 exams tomorrow and 3 on Friday.

The Illusionist
- "This is it boys, you have to go in there and just get on with it. There is no 'I can't do this' or I 'We haven't been taught how to do this'. This is the moment, the moment you've all been building up to."

Hearing him phrase it like that, conjured up images of being on the flight deck, in a situation. There IS NO going back; here you are, the pressure is here, the tools you have are all you have. It is time for me to prove my strength of character, in the first of many trials that will face me in my career.

Here goes; wish me luck..

Teaching Over..

Today we finished the teaching for Phase One for ground school. We managed to rearrange a few of tomorrow's teaching videos to allow us to have tomorrow as a revision day before the onslaught of exams on Thursday and Friday.

It has been another revision slog at home since getting back from school. There is really not much else to report at the moment.

I am however starting to feel slightly more confident about the exams now, with the progress of revision. Since we have learnt the effects of stress and how they can be alleviated and managed, it doesn't seem so bad.

We were given some guidance and counsel from a few of the instructors as to how to approach the exams.

Now to top up on some REM..

The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands..

Today we learnt that automation of flying has its pros and its cons. Whilst it was introduced with the sole effort to reduce the workload of pilots from the actual 'Hands on' flying, so pilots could assume a more managerial role, taking in the 'bigger picture' to improve situational awareness.

It has infact removed the pilot from the act of flying, so much so, that there is very little engagement from the pilot.

This can lead to boredom on the flight deck. As there are only so many times one can read The Times newspaper from cover to cover, airlines have strived to include things for pilots to do onboard, to keep themselves amused and entertained. Tasks such as checklists and monitoring tasks are prime examples in the hope of maintaining intelligence arousal levels, should any emergencies arise.

It has been known for pilots to get itchy fingers in these times of boredom and begin to experiment, with accompanying phrases such as

"I wonder what the plane will do, if I do this..!"

Or, another favourite;

"Do you think the plane will let us do this?"

With the imminence of my exams, unfortunately I have no idle time to do anything other than study..

And Then There Were Three..

Three days of teaching continue tomorrow in the hope of finishing the material before Thursday's exams.

Another 'successful' day of revision. The general feeling at this stage is fear mixed with frustration.

As advised I am trying to keep up my REM sleep to help organise the information. So an early night..

Revision..

With the internal exams this week, all free time has become revision time. This has meant being up bright and early in the morning and revising until the late hours of the night.

This is a time of "All work and no play".

It is all very dull..

The Crash..

We had just gotten back to the classroom after lunch and were entertaining ourselves with YouTube videos as we usually do, when all of the sudden the Airborne Incident Klaxon began to ring continuously.

We had never heard one of these occur during the day, apart from the drills occasionally heard in the mornings.

We all jumped up to the windows of the classroom to see what all the commotion was. We could see the Fire Response team frantically belting up and down the taxiways, but we couldn't see any cause of the alert.

The alarm was soon silenced and we returned to our classes.

We later found out that there had been a crash of an aircraft; not one of the school's. It had gone down near the North Eastern Side of the airfield in Bladon.

BBC News - Two killed in plane crash near Oxford Airport

Two people were killed; when we found this out, the same thought ran across all of our minds..

The Negotiations..

So, today was aconsiderably more productive day and we had non stop teaching of new material.

The Chief was in today so we were able to hold negotiations with him and discuss the current state of affairs regarding our exam situation. We had given him time to prepare; we had done the same.

His stance was one which was firm but fair; which is what we had expected. We discussed the current situation in depth and he laid out the options that were available to the school. The Chief did most of the talking which left us the role of putting our thoughts forward at the right moments.

In the end, it turns out that we will have finished being taught the material the day before the exams and allowed an uncompromised 9 days to study for the external exams.

Not entirely the best situation, but nothing that we "Steely eyed, square jawed" cadets can't handle..

Trainee Pilots in Command ..

This morning I awoke to find a considerable depth of snow had fallen overnight and was continuing to fall. The thought of school being cancelled crossed my mind. This would not be beneficial; sometime shortly after I received a text confirming that school was in fact still on.

When I arrived at school there was a considerable lack of staff and a general clamour, which I could only assume meant that a number of staff had called in to say they were unable to make it in.

We sat idly by whilst no instructor arrived in our classroom. It became clear that today was going to be an unproductive day.

At present all of our class are very stressed out; we have not finished the material to be taught for our upcoming exams, our internal assessments are next week, with the external exams 9 days after these. Prospective employers see all of the results when making an offer of employment; making our resultsvery important..!

So, considering we haven't finished the material, snow days are of little solace.

Unhappy with the way we will inevitably suffer; a few of our class went to speak to The Chief, to see what steps of mitigation were being taken. He was not in, and so we were brushed aside by one of his supporting cast.

Another instructorless lesson began; fed up with this we collared a free instructor and insisted he teach us to prevent any further shortcoming. A lesson later, we were informed by Mr Pilot that lessons had been cancelled for the afternoon and the school was being closed at lunch. We convinced Mr Pilot to remain behind and teach us a lesson in the afternoon; he kindly obliged.

Today we took the scheduling of our classes and the length of our wokring day into our own hands; if that's not showing initiative when the shit is about to hit the fan, I don't know what is..!

Tomorrow we will have another go at reparative talks with The Chief; at this point the shit is extremely close to the fan and something will need to be done, done in an expeditious manner.

If not, we may follow the examples led by our employed fellow pilots and go on strike..!

Go Ahead..

Today we finally began learning how to use RT communications with The Navigator; he is a very well spoken old Ex-RAF navigator who had some very important roles during his service. We hadn't really met him up till now, but he started off with a certain style. His phone went off just after he had introduced himself; he recovered with a well delivered communications based pun.

The Navigator
- "Oh, excuse me; how embarrassing. It must be Air Traffic Control with an important transmission."

He went away to answer it and returned shortly following.

"Oh, a tree has just fallen on my house, and broken my roof. But please, you shouldn't worry about it..!"

We continued the lesson how he meant to begin.

It is still worrying how much we have to learn and then revise before the exams..

Revised Timetables..

Today, school was actually on..!

We went through some timetabling issues that we may have over the next few days and the lack of time in which to finish the taught material prior to the exams.

It may be the case that 'the instructors would be happy to go in on Saturday to teach'; great, all we need now is to find some students who are happy to go in and learn..!

There seems to be quite an expanse of information to learn for the exams in a very short time. What's more, the online practice questions are only sporadically functional..

Time for more revision fun..

School Tomorrow..

So, I've been stuck in the house revising for five days now. I am extremely fed up of this snow situation.

I never thought I would hear myself say this, but, I really hope there is school tomorrow..

Cabin Fever...

Today is the third day that flight school has been cancelled due to the snow.

An email from The Chief yesterday suggested that we may not be back to normal lessons even by Monday. Our looming exams have had to be rescheduled to allow enough time for the teaching to be completed. However the bootstrap effect of this will mean that the exams which follow(the ones that count) will have to be taken with less time to revise for as it is very diffucult for these to be changed.

Not the best situation really and I think we are the class to be most adversely affected by the snow.

So I've been stuck in this house with not much else to do except revise from the books that I have and use the online materials to further revise. This is extremely dull and I am beginning to suffer from Cabin Fever.

The only respite I have from being in the house is a short trip to Sainsbury's to get some groceries..!

I haven't started hallucinating yet, or at least I don't think I have. I'm going to get back to playing cards with Santa and the leprechaun in the corner..

There's Snow School Today..

Following yesterday's emergency dismissal of flight school we all had a feeling that school would be cancelled today.

The snow continued to fall throughout the night and this morning I awoke to find in excess of 7" of snow on the ground. Just after getting myself ready for the day ahead, the phone call came with the news.

And sure enough, school was cancelled; whilst many of my fellow cadets sought to catch up on some extra sleep, I began revising. We are very behind at this moment. The cancellation of classes is beginning to worry; this became more serious when we received an email confirming the cancellation of tomorrow's classes also..!

We did however get a morale boosting email from The Chief, reassuring us that steps were being taken to ensure that we did not suffer as a result.

Anyway, I still managed to have some fun in the snow with some of the other guys on the course..!


Sometimes, on this course, I feel as though it might be easier to keep us detained in a submarine for the duration of the teaching and we only get to come out when it is done..!

Engine Failure..

Mr Pilot
- "This is when the plane wants to kill you..! If you ever find yourself flying and one of your engines goes, then the plane is now trying to kill you. You had better have your wits about you otherwise the plane is going to win. And you will be in the ground."

A stern look came across his face.

"I am not joking, this is no laughing matter; the plane will yaw uncontrollably, then roll and before you know it, the nose will be dropping straight into your graves..!"

Today we were being taught the effects of an engine failure on a multi engine aircraft. As you can gather this is quite a serious matter.

"This is not some shit you learn to pass exams, you learn this to keep yourself alive; reeeaall pilot shit!" (He prolonged the word 'real' for emphasis)

We were then given various senarios in which things were happening and what we would do to prevent and mitigate them; we had to think on our own with no conferring with our fellow cadets. We all had a good think and came up with our best guesses..

"When you are up there in the plane and the only time on the clock is the maker's name, you are not going to be able to discuss this with your friends."

After a short pause for us to have our guesses.

"You lot disappoint me..!"

We're not that bad, really..!

Back to Autopilot..

So, having only had a week and a bit off for Christmas, we were back to the books. Weirdly, once I was back it didn't feel as though we had had a break at all. Except for the marked feeling that some of the material was far from my memory.

We are now very close to the final internal exams before the 'actual ones' and I feel as though we haven't the time to cover the remaining material; the instructors however have a very difference attitude to this.

We are yet to start learning how to communicate via RT (Radio Transmission) for which we have two exams and we are yet to complete material on Autopilot.

The instructor we have for autopilot is very funny; he is a middle aged Ex-RAF engineer and as deadpan and cynical as Jack Dee on a good day.

Officer Deadpan
- "Here are some pictures of the flight decks on which you may be flying; your offices if you will. Here you can see they have installed foot rests on the dashboard to stop you from getting your dirty italian shoes all over the controls. They have also replaced the cup holder with a water bottle holder so you can all look very trendy with your bottles of Evian on the flight deck.!

(This spiel being delivered in a very monotone voice)

This plane even has a full desk for you to eat your lunch on with full an intranet onboard so you can send the cabin crew an email to bring you some coffee..!

You just switch this thing on, go to sleep and take the money..!"

At the moment, I think I need both, some sleep and some money..

The New Year..

I've jut gotten back from a very fun filled and busy Festive season. My 'week and a half' off from flight school has flown by [excuse the pun] and I am back in Kidlington for the next onslaught of training.

At least I managed to have some fun and recover from a bout of flu which has been doing the rounds.

Having just met up with the guys for a few drinks and a welcome back after the hols, it seems as though it has been ages since we have last seen each other; having only just been separated for slightly more than a week.

My only solace having done very little work over the holidays, is that neither have any of the other guys.

We are all in for a crazy few weeks before our exams; which are fast approaching.

An early night's sleep is probably what is needed to ensure I wake up in time for school tomorrow..

I think this year, more work, less time wasting and more directed learning; we'll see how long it lasts..