85% isn’t a bad mark. The few I did get wrong were stupid mistakes with daylight and darkness graphs. There were a few rogue questions I ran into. The first was a question relating to the ADF. It read something like this; “If your track is 140M and HDG is 135M, what should a fixed-card ADF indicate if you are on track if your departure AD has an NDB?†It threw me to begin with but it’s quite a simple question once I drew it on a bit of paper.
The next question was very odd. “What is the fuel burn?†Data I worked out was fuel used = 36 litres in 32 mins. I came up with a fuel burn of 67.5 Litres per hour. Same answer on my flight computer and the calculator. The answers provided were
A. 55Lph
B. 65Lph
C. 70Lph
D. 85Lph
So with my calculated rate of 67.5 Lph, is it closer to 65Lph or 70 Lph?
Before the exam I was mingling with the other guys doing exams when a CASA man walked in and asked where to park. We gave him directions and then 5 mins later two of them walk into the exam centre just as we were about to head in to the exam room. (The exam centre was AAPA at Wagga). They were there just for a bit of an inspection but after I walked out of the exam room, they pulled me aside for some questions. The pair introduced themselves and were quite polite and just wanted some feedback on the questions in the exam i.e. how they were worded, any mistakes I think I may have found etc. I told them the story about the 67.5 litre question and also mentioned that sometimes heights are not given as height AGL or AMSL which creates confusion before you even begin to work out the answer. They seemed genuine and very open to feedback but they weren’t writing anything down.
To anyone about to have a stab at CNAV, know how to obtain BOD and EOD and all the other conversions that go with them, general conversions (I found it easier to read them out of the ERSA and use a calculator rather than use the whiz wheel), off-track calc’s and read up on VOR and ADF. That was the exam in a nutshell.
PS. One little thing Mr CASA did mention was that in the time he had been looking after exam questions, two students had found errors in questions. On the other hand, thousands who had thought they’d found errors in questions either had out of date documents or completely stuffed up somewhere. And apparently the exams are reviewed before each amendment so make sure you have current charts and documents!
