I took the test on Friday and this weekend has been hell waiting for the rest of my scores. Anyway, I got 66 8/7/7 which I am pretty happy about. I'm majoring in computer science and minoring in math and astronomy so I was confident going into the multiple choice part except for the reading which I have no idea how I did. The tracking part was... frustrating.
The math part was pretty basic. I actually only had about 10 questions then it cut me off so I took that as a good thing I think. I had some basic algebra like 1/(x) = 1/(x+1) + 2/(x+3) which I didn't work out so I just plugged the answers in to get the right one. Another one which I had no idea about was "Which of the following functions is symmetry about the origin?" x^2, x^3, 1/x^2, or |x|. The wording was kind of weird for me at the time but thinking back to it x^3 was the right answer since the other 3 are only symmetric about the y-axis. Other than those there was one dice problem, no triangle problems, the volume of a sphere, reduction of fractions, and computing missing nodes in an average.
The reading part I have absolutely no idea. I think I ran out of time for this part but for about half of them the answer was easily obtainable from the paragraph but others had more than one answer that I thought could be right but often it came down to one word in the sentence that made one better than the other. But, like I said no idea how I did.
The physics part was pretty easy I thought. This part is a blur so I don't actually remember too much from this section. Pullys, pendulums, buoyancy, force balancing (actually needed to do a little calculation), ...
The aviation part was a part that was heavily aided by studying. Know pitch, roll, and yaw as well as which aircraft part controlls them. Mine actually had 2 questions on trim which I thought to be redundant since it's such a simple concept. I also had one that asked if you want to roll left, which aileron should go up. What do flaps do?
Now comes to the "fun" part. The spatial awareness part with the parking lots was something I studied a bit for but I should have done more. I would generally answer in about 2-3 seconds but I missed 3 or 4. My algorithm was take the needle and then put it facing the direction that was said then use the number of 90-degree increments that I had used to get the needle in the right direction and count the number of parking lots from there. My issue was I would sometimes put the needle on the direction that was said instead of pointing in the direction that was said so the ones I got wrong were 180 degrees off. Definitely could have done better with more studying or if I took maybe .5-1 seconds more.
The listening part was easy for me. I did miss an entire ear, however, because I sort of didn't realize the test had started. I thought I could go back for another round of practice. The head tilt works.
The vertical tracking took a bit to get used to the sensitivity but after I did I was generally on target. The thing that made my results better was getting used to how major of an adjustment is needed to change directions when the little plane makes sudden moves.
Now the 2D tracking...this was the part that I thought I absolutely tanked. Playing GTA for 4 years and flying around in the fighters for hours got me used to pushing forward to move the nose down and pulling back to pull the nose up. I don't know if it was the interface or just the feeling of the joystick but I kept wanting to push forward to make the plane go up. The first round with exclusively 2D tracking was horrendous. It was like a blind drunk guy trying to pee in a toilet. Then to make it worse, the inversion made my brain think left should be right so on top of pulling up to go down I also moved right to go left. It was bad! But more practice with the addition of vertical tracking was better. Using peripheral vision with the occasional peek worked for me. Once I got to both tracking with audio I had gotten into some better habits. I was finally keeping the target pretty close to the plane with some decent stretches in the green. Listening to the numbers was more difficult than before; I ended up getting 2 or 3 numbers wrong. I sort of neglected the vertical tracking except for when I realized that my left hand was moving with the altitude of the 2D tracking so I had to make more of an effort to keep my periphery tied to that one.
If you have the means to, I would try getting a joystick and getting used to it. If I could spend even an hour or 2 before taking it again I could maybe make a couple muscle memory connections and get 8s or 9s on that part.
For the emergency procedures, I wrote down the names of the dials (E and I) instead of what they control. There are 3 scenarios. For fire, E and I should be at 0% then press the clutch button. I don't remember which setting went with the remaining two scenarios but for one E is at 100% and I is at 0% and the other scenario is the other way around. If you just write them down you should be fine. When you turn the knobs you'll see an indicator on the dials in the bottom right of the screen. Red means 100% and yellow means 0%
