Did my AGK exam yesterday morning and thought I might shed some light to you who are sitting it in the future. Had a bit of a celebration night afterwards so I will do my best at remembering.

Firstly it is quite passable so don't panick, but I must admit, when I had sat BAK, PPL, CPL Air Law, CPL Aerodynamics, they were all almost as though answering Bob Tait's questions all over again, if you know his text well you can't go wrong. However as I started the AGK exam, I realised the questions were quite different. I started to become a little worried about half way through, but managed 85% My lowest score yet and after a week and a half of several hour study days straight with no break time, I was rather dissapointed. I had studied the Bob Tait AGK book inside out, and even the ATC book, which I only used for cross referencing in other exam topics. I had by far studied the most for this exam, but achieved the lowest score, so while passable, do not take short cuts in your study. I had also achieved a 90% 92% 95% and 100% in the Bob Tait cyber practice exams, I was actually aiming the highest in this exam out of all my previous ones, but there were just questions that I could not answer.

I also got a KDR on changing power settings, which I know back to front, and one about adnormal instrument indications, which I think was a question about a blocked fuel discharge nozzel in a fuel injection system, which I said would cause fuel pressure to rise, or fuel flow to drop.

There was also a question asking about a leak in the exhaust system in a turbocharged engine, well one answer was right if it was not an automatic waste gate, and one was right if it was an automatic wastegate. Well the fact that question was written as "You are flying AT LOW ALTITUDE WITH HIGH POWER settings, and experience a leak in the exhaust system before the turbine of a turbocharged engine, what would you expect' LOW ALTITUDE WITH HIGH POWER made me think automatic waste gate, and I got it right, so look out for things like that.

Apart from that there were a few things thrown at me which I am surprised I got right, but as I don't have the KDR for them I can't quite remember them well enough and would hate to type the wrong advice. Hope this helps.

Oh and Bob, if you're reading, no Helix Angle or Helical Path was mentioned

Please be careful not to post actual exam questions on this forum. I do appreciate that your intentions are to assist other candidates in their preparation for the exam, however CASA considers it illegal to reveal the actual content of exam questions by any means including posts on this forum. I have moderated your post to remove mention of actual questions. Please understand that your posts are as welcome as they are well intentioned, but we must obey the law.

Thanks for you feed-back, it is most appreciated.

Bob

Sorry didn't know, will keep it in mind. Noticed they were posted on certain other forum sites, they obviously must not follow the law then, I will keep it in mind in the future.

Interesting, I also scored low...... 69%, I am a degree qualified electrical engineer! Embarrassing as it is to admit! I studied very hard for this exam and was very confident, only to have a shock when reading the questions, poorly worded and only a handful were recognizable questions which I could answer 'on auto'. I was careful not to be overconfident and read through each question twice as I know they can trip you up with a well positioned word or two!

For example can anyone tell me what a Fixed waste gate is and where it is mentioned in the Bob Tate book? Also not in the AFT either, I was under the impression that a fixed gate was only used in the very first supercharging systems. There were other questions on topics I had not seen at all in the books. I studied both BT and AFT and did the practice exams at least 4 times each, in the week preceding the exam I was getting 95 to 100% in ALL the tests. I have just purchased a set of practice exams and scored 95 and 98 in two of them, will do the other two tomorrow.

So! What on earth went wrong for me and what should I do now? Go through all the subject again? There were 12 KDR's but as we know the KDR does nothing to assist you in what area of that topic you are lacking in, for example one of the KDR's was Ammeter!! I could build an ammeter from scratch and then do the Advanced Calculus to demonstrate how it works!!

Any and all tips would be greatly appreciated.

Tech1 I am also a qualified electrician Ha

Make sure you are using Bob's most recent book's, I studied using only his AGK book and it deffinately mentions fixed waste gate's and the risk of overboosting using them.

I used his July 7 2011 Issue

Fixed waste gate's are mention on paged 4.3 in this text.

They are set by an engineer on the ground and a fixed proportion of gas is fed to the turbine at all time's, meaning you must not advance the throttle to full throttle untill full throttle height (As there is no way of limiting the boost other than keeping the throttle partially closed)

Any more queries hit me up, but yeah make sure you use his latest issues, and refer to the day VFR syllabus, you can't go wrong

Thanks for the feedback, doing some cyber exams now, and you are correct, my book is out of date, stupid mistake, will get the new one.
Another question:

During the compression and power strokes of a theoretical 4-stroke cycle, on a horizontally opposed engine -

the exhaust valve remains closed
both inlet valves remain open
both valves remain closed
both valves remain open

Now my initial reaction to this was confusion as none appear to be correct, during the power stroke the exhaust valve is opened 'valve lead' about 55deg prior to BDC? I know the answer is 'both remain closed' Is this because it is a 'Theoretical four stroke engine'?

Will probably have another crack at the exam in a week or so.
Trying to squeeze study, flying and a job is a struggle.

Cheers

Yes I think that is just 'One of those questions' where you really just need to pick the 'Most correct' answer. You are right about lead and lag but obviously they have dissregarded that in this question. If you got a similar question in CASA exam and had an answer mentioning the lead and lag, then I would choose that over 'Both remain closed'

So long as you get the general jist of valve lead, lag, and overlap, you should be fine in that department in the exam I think. The good thing about the AGK exam is you have plenty of time to go over your answers after completion and put some extra thought into them. Always think REAL hard before changing answers though, nothing worse than changing to a wrong answer, especially if you are only around that 70% region.

Tech1, you are correct. The answer for the "theoretical" Otto Cycle is that both valves are closed during those strokes. Valve Lead, Lag and Overlap apply only to the modified or "actual" Otto Cycle.

I did the AGK exam on Monday and scored 93%. Although it is my lowest score so far, I am reasonably happy with the result.

There were two questions that made absolutely no sense to me. The first was about a blocked pitot tube on climb. There were five possible answers as to what indication the pilot would get in the cockpit but none of them were correct! Two possibilities referred to the static instruments so could be discounted straight away. One possibility was that there was no indication, which we know is not true in a climb so that could be discounted also. The other two possibilities were a nose higher attitude or nose lower attitude to maintain IAS - again neither is correct. The ASI is going to read the total pressure (unchanging due to blockage) less static pressure (dropping as you are in a climb) so the IAS will not remain constant unless you cease your climb. I chose the 'no indication' response as I felt it was the least incorrect, but I got it wrong. Any ideas???

The second question really has me stumped as I have no idea what the correct answer is. It referred to the RPM to select for best rate of climb in a CSU aircraft - higher, lower, or the same as the cruise RPM. My thoughts initially went back to my aerodynamics exam and I thought a higher RPM as this would provide more power, and best ROC occurs at maximum surplus power. But as I re-read the question, I noted that it had specified for a constant power setting (I cannot remember the exact phrasing of the question). Now this is weird. I would have thought that a constant power setting would result in the same ROC - ie power in equals power out. This would mean the RPM is irrelevant - a higher RPM would mean a lower MAP and a lower RPM would mean a higher MAP and they would all produce the same power and same rate of climb. I wondered if they were trying to test knowledge of engine volumetric efficiency - ie lower RPM produces better volumetric efficiency and thus more power, but the specification of a constant power setting in the question negates that and besides it would be silly to lower RPM to achieve a better climb in the real world because overboost would become an issue. I wondered if they were trying to test knowledge of best AoA for the propeller blades, ie higher RPM for the lower speed, but very few CSU aircraft would benefit from this as it would require the full fine pitch stop to be reached at cruise RPM at the best ROC speed (very few would reach it) to be of any benefit. In the real world we select a higher RPM/MAP for the climb, but this about preventing overboost rather than improving the rate of climb as such. It really has me stumped, would appreciate hearing others thoughts on this one (in the end I selected the same as cruise RPM as I honestly have no idea - but I got it wrong so obviously whatever they are looking for it isn't that!).

For others attempting the exam, it is 40 multi choice, all worth one mark. If you have read, studied and understood Bob's text you will pass no problem. There is plenty of time to check your answers.

Gidday Ray

Firstly congratulations on a truly excellent mark in the AGK exam.

I get frustrated with some of these questions. As far as the ASI goes, it almost never is the case that a pitot blockage is absolute and completely air-tight. More likely it would be a partial blockage and result in erratic readings as has been the case on the rare occasions when I have experienced it [insect gut splattered over the pitot]. However, if the idea is to test the theory, I think the reasoning would be as follows. A fixed total pressure within the capsule would be acting against an ever decreasing static pressure as the climb progressed. The ASI would progressively over read and if the pilot was attempting to maintain a constant IAS, he/she would most likely be continually raising the nose to a higher and higher attitude which could eventually lead to a stall.

As for climb power, you can maintain constant power by using various combinations of MAP and RPM. For propeller efficiency, higher RPM [lower blade angle] while power is maintained by reducing the MAP, would give the best efficiency from the propeller at the lower airspeed. That results in more actual thrust for the same BHP. Again, it's very theoretical because you wouldn't have such detailed MAP/RPM tables to allow you to do such a thing.

Congratulations once again. You obviously have a very sound grasp of the subject.

Bob