Oral Exam Guides

[Trip7]

At my school our head flight instructor told our bookstore to get rid of all the Oral exam guides. I just ordered the ASA Instrument oral exam guide from Amazon. Do you guys have any problems with the guides? I hear the head instructor doesnt like them because people just memorize it and don't learn anything. I think it can be effectively used as a learning tool. What do you think?

[kellwolf]

It's an awful lot of crap to memorize. Personally, I think the PPL and the IR ones are okay, but stopped using them after that. The Comm one was full of a bunch of useless stuff, IMO. JH will back me up on that after hours of "WTF does this mean?" conversations last summer.

[jtrain609]

Hey Steve,


Did you know one of Les Cothran's old students wrote all those oral exam guides? The sombitch trained down the field when he still had his flight school, went out into the world and decided nobody had a real good way to prepare for an oral so he wrote all of those things.

Brilliant.

And yes, the commercial one sucks. You can come up with better, and more realistic questions just by reading the PTS down.

[DE727UPS]

I swear by those things. You should memorize it. There's a lot of good info there that could be in the oral. I wouldn't teach from it or use it as the only source of reference. But they are great little guides for oral prep...hence, the name.

[bdhill1979]

I love them because they are small, fit nicely into my back pocket and i can take them with me wherever I am. Yesterday, waiting for a haircut. Monday, waiting at the doctors office. WHen you are preparing for a ride it a hell of a lot better than the magazine selection at fantastic sam's or the OB/GYN.

[Minnesota_Flyer]

On my instrument ride, the oral consisted (in part) of the examiner flipping through the Instrument Oral Guide and asking questions out of it. Sadly, I had not used it to study.

[JaceTheAce]

They are EXCELLENT. You should memorize them. The Commercial ASA oral exam guide only refers to mainly Cessna systems, so be careful when saying what it tells you to say if your checkride is done in an Arrow.

[deserteaglle]

I thought that you could order specific ASA oral exam guides for your a/c? Maybe not.

Anyway, I used it on my pvt and am using it on my instrument as well (ASA). I friggin' loved it even though I didn't need most of it. That, a checkride cd and ASA groundschool dvd just helped me be a lot more confident.

Problem, I feel some of the more obscure stuff already starting to slip as I'm in this work, work, work and build cross country time rut. I really feel like I learn alot on every flight I take now, especially those with passengers, but that's more of a confident with the airplane and my flying than it is knowing all of the questions from the exam booklet.

Makes me feel about ready to start getting my butt kicked some more by my instructor and get to work on my Inst.

[aviatorrbt]

I was told by an examiner that they are a great source of information, but one should study other books also.

[falconvalley]

I used the Inst OEG for my interviews. It helped tremendously. I got a nice brush up on stuff I hadn't seen in a while. Nothing wrong with memorizing it! It's good stuff!

There is something wrong with never opening your Inst/comm manual during training and just memorizing the OEGs and Gleim. That's cheating yourself.

[KW]

The ASA oral guides are excellent - perfect to carry around and use for constant studying leading up to an exam. The other thing I find very helpful is to sit down about a month in advance and start reading through the applicable FAA text (pilots handbook of aeronautical knowledge, or instrument flying handbook etc) and the FAR/AIM (use the study guide in the front of the FAR/AIM - gives a pretty complete guide of the important sections for each rating). By doing this the important stuff should be right on the tip of your tongue, and the rest should be close behind - worst case you'll at least have seen what they are asking about and know where to find the answer (which is much better then telling the examiner you have no clue).

[Trip7]

I gotten to read a bit of it during work, very well put together, its alittle short on how the instruments work because the check instructors at my school go really in deep with that but besides that everything else is awesome.

[mtsu_av8er]

Originally Posted by 777forever

I hear the head instructor doesnt like them because people just memorize it and don't learn anything.

Just like those silly Emergency procedures, and limitations. Pilots out there learning things by heart . . .

[desertdog71]

I think they are a good way to brush up on things. They make a good quick reference and give examples of what might be asked.

I however think that the PTS is a far better tool when preparing for the Oral. Every checkride I have done started with the examiner whipping out the PTS. OH and read the whole PTS not just the outline of the checkride. The stuff in the front is important too.

[aloft]

The guide for the ATP looked like it had a lot of really good stuff in it.

[Trip7]

Man this book is nice! I should have used it on my private, would have made studying easier. I was walking around at our flight operations building and everytime someone saw me they were like ooh you got the evil bad book, dont let the head instructors see you with that. I dont see whats the big deal.

[bdhill1979]

Originally Posted by 777forever

Man this book is nice! I should have used it on my private, would have made studying easier. I was walking around at our flight operations building and everytime someone saw me they were like ooh you got the evil bad book, dont let the head instructors see you with that. I dont see whats the big deal.

That's just stupid that someone would have a problem with a quality study aid. You aren't cheating, you are learning. If you use ONLY the OEG to prepare for your ride, and all you are doing is memorizing rote answers then you are just an idiot and it will show in the oral exam. Some things are just up to memorization(TOMATO FLAMES?, GRAB CARD?, etc) and the OEG has that sort of stuff neatly organized in one little book. I think that the writers of the OEG deliberately give short answers so that you will be turned on to the right track and learn the long answer for yourself. At least that is how I have used the OEG.