prestonaz
Active Member
I took the ASTB for the first time yesterday and got a 65 9/9/9. I cannot thank everyone who has posted information on here enough! My background also contributed greatly to my score, as I'm a private and instrument rated helicopter pilot with about 300 flight hours, I'm prior enlisted Marine Corps, and I was in the aeronautics program at Embry-Riddle. However, all of the information and practice you need to get a great score is available free online. Without a doubt if you put a lot of effort into studying you can do just as well. I was lucky and graduated recently, so I had the free time to spend about a month and a half studying all day every day. The last two or three weeks before the test I was studying 8-10 hours every day. I probably spent about 90% of that studying math because it's always been my weakest area. Most people probably don't have time for that, but I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing you can do is STUDY STUDY STUDY! I also took the day before the test to relax and do nothing (very important), got a good night sleep, and gave myself time in the morning to eat a good breakfast. There isn't a whole lot more I can say that hasn't already been said throughout this thread, but I'll add what I can even though the whole thing went by as a blur!
Math - I got a decent amount of percentages, percentages of percentages, interest, etc. Had some D=RT, I think one probability question. I had one question that was something along the lines of (x^2-2x-6)/(x^3-5x^2+7) and I couldn't get it to look like any of the answers so I ended up guessing. No logs or matrices, which made me think I didn't do well enough to get to them but I don't know. Some of the percentage and D=RT problems got complicated, and I spent a lot of time studying them so I don't think I got any wrong. I got a question on binary (how is the number 4 written in binary? 0100). The best resource I had for the math section was Khan Academy. I think I filled an entire notebook using it as scratch paper going through as much as I could on Khan Academy and it definitely helped. Overall, nothing surprising that hasn't already been mentioned.
Reading - As most say, lots of very dry, hard to focus on passages about naval regulations and such. I seemed to get a non-naval regulations question that was much easier to follow between every naval-regulations question. That made me feel like I wasn't doing too well. I also ended up running out of time in this section but I felt like I had answered at least 20 questions by that point. I don't know for sure. I did go through the reading section of the Trivium and Test Prep Books ASTB guides (I'll discuss those guides further down), and I never skipped the reading section in practice tests. That all probably helped a bit. I think maybe if you try reading through the Federal Aviation Regulations and try to make sense of that it will help you practice for both reading and aviation at the same time. https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/faa_regulations/ you'd probably be best to start with "General Operating and Flight Rules (14 CFR Part 91)."
Mechanical - Mostly conceptual, I think I used my scratch paper once or twice to do a very, very simple calculation. Khan Academy is another great resource. I had a few questions on pulleys, Bernoulli's principle, a question on the symbols used in electrical circuits. Again, nothing surprising that hasn't been mentioned here already.
Aviation/Nautical Info - I got mostly aviation questions (what do all red lights on a VASI mean [too low], transponder squawk code for loss of communication [7600], what are the characteristics of unstable air [turbulence and good visibility] etc.), a few history questions (The primary strategic bomber used in the 1950s [B-36], etc.) I did get one question asking how aircraft carrier design changed to compensate for larger aircraft such as the 33 ton F-14 Tomcat. I wasn't 100% sure on the answer to this, the answer were along the lines of A. More powerful hydraulic catapults [I disregarded this answer because there are no hydraulic catapults that I know of] B. Take-off power of the aircraft [I disregarded this answer because although modern aircraft have some powerful engines, I don't think they're able to compensate enough]. C. Something about longer runways on carriers I think? or the answer I went with, D. Larger, more powerful catapults. It seemed to make the most sense, but I could definitely have been wrong on it. I also had a question on some pilot I never heard of and I don't remember the name of (I tried to get myself to remember his name for you guys, I promise and I'm sorry lol) and what war did he participate in what was considered to be one of the most complex dogfights in history. I guessed WW2 because they had some pretty damn complex dogfights, but idk for sure. I also had a couple nautical information questions. I think you can easily find all the knowledge you need for the aviation and nautical information, but it's really hard to study for the history questions without studying the entirety of naval aviation history. The Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge is great, and I also recommend the FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/AIM_Basic_dtd_10-12-17.pdf if you want a physical copy, you can go to your local pilot shop (which will probably have lots of other great books and manuals as well) or probably order it online. The whole thing is called the FAR/AIM. (Federal Aviation Regulations I mentioned in the reading section, and Aeronautical Information Manual all in the same book). I recommend the most recent year, and they're not terribly expensive.
Naval Aviation Trait Facet Inventory - as most have described it, would you rather drive your car through a retirement home on bingo night, or burn down an orphanage. I did notice one thing about many of the questions I haven't seen anyone else mention. On a lot of them, it will give you options that say something like "I USUALLY lash out at others when I'm under stress" or "I SOMETIMES break the rules." Since neither of them describe me at all, I often found myself picking the one that said "sometimes" rather than "usually" because saying it happens less often is the most applicable when it doesn't actually ever happen at all. There are a few that you'll have trouble deciding on, but as others have said, look at them from the perspective of a military leader and aviator/NFO.
UAV Portion - The flashcards posted in this thread were great. I practiced them for hours, and probably spent about 5 hours in one day practicing them in the week leading up to my test. I would have my wife time me while I went through them, but that's not entirely accurate because the flashcards load slower and you have to click more than once. You'll also be quicker on the actual test because you don't need to read which parking lot to identify, it tells you in the headphones. The compass trick is good if you're really just not great with cardinal directions, but I HIGHLY recommend trying to move past it and do it without the compass trick. I've got a ton of experience with using cardinal directions and compasses and all that, so it wasn't an issue for me. With enough practice you can do the same though! I found the compass trick to be too slow. Without it, I was able to answer the questions in 1.1-1.3 seconds and I got 3 wrong. One important thing though, THE TEST DID NOT ALLOW ME UNLIMITED PRACTICE!!!! I don't know if they recently changed it, but it let me do only 8 practice questions and then it forced me to start the test. I was looking forward to sitting there and practicing for 10 minutes and I was not allowed to.
Dichotic listening - Tilt your head toward the ear you need to be listening to, it helps!
Stick and Throttle Tracking - I was given an X-52 HOTAS, and I probably have several hundred hours in flight simulators with an X-56 so that was nice. It was in good condition, and I didn't have any issues with using it. Both the stick and throttle did have a little bit of a deadzone in the middle which threw me off a bit. The throttle being neutral in the middle rather than all the way back threw me off a bit too, but I tried thinking of it like a helicopter collective and that helped. Also, yes the stick has pitch inverted, but with a solid black background giving no reference it does make this a little tricky. What I would recommend is practice in a flight simulator using 1st person view and the camera forward such that there are no cockpit instruments or any part of the aircraft visible. Maybe just a HUD so you have a reticle to follow or something like that. Practice like that a lot, and then when you're in the test try to imagine that's your perspective. It's still kinda tricky, I felt myself instinctively moving my feet trying to yaw lol I also kept trying to roll and then pitch up to chase the target. This test is CLEARLY designed to make it impossible to track the targets perfect, but I think as long as you keep your controls moving in the general direction toward the target, and perform the dichotic listening and emergency procedure well (write the emergency procedures down!), you'll be ok. For the simultaneous stick and throttle multi-tasking I tried two methods: The first I tried scanning my eyes back and forth between the throttle target and the stick target very quickly, much like an instrument pilot quickly scans gauges. I also tried focusing on the stick target while watching the throttle target in my peripheral vision. I don't know that either was better, the whole damn thing is just too chaotic lol. For the emergency procedure I recommend you at least TRY to continue flying while you execute them. It only gave me each emergency once, and they're fairly simple to solve, so just do your best to keep pushing the controls in the general direction of the target. I also realized right before the emergency procedures section that the HOTAS had suction cups on the bottom to keep it from sliding on the desk. That helped, so check to see if yours does too.
As I said before, there's absolutely no reason you or anyone else can't get a great score on this test. As long as you're willing to put forth the effort that would be required of a successful naval aviator/flight officer/any officer, you will do just fine. STUDY STUDY STUDY!!!
(Edit: I forgot to discuss the study guides I used! I used both Trivium and Test Prep Books, and they were meh. I started my studying with those and it was a good introduction to everything that would be on the test, but some of their information is wrong. Trivium would do things in the examples without explaining them, but Test Prep Books explained things a bit better. I can't remember which one, but one of the guides had a picture of a compass that had 400 degrees and the S for South was backward. That right there about sums up the study guides I think lol.
ALSO! A lot of the gouge documents on here are great but I really only used them for history information. I found the way they formatted math questions to be difficult to follow, and some of the information was wrong. For example, every piece of gouge I read said that fog forms when warm air moves over cooler water. This is not necessarily true! It sound like they're talking about advection fog, which would be correct, but specifically mentioning water like that makes me think of steam fog. Steam fog occurs when cooler air moves over warmer water. I always remember this because it was described to me as watching steam come off a hot cup of coffee on a cold day. Here is weather.gov's description of fog types and you'll see what I mean: https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/fog_stuff/fog_definitions/Fog_definitions.html
Overall, the study guides and gouge is good for getting a good idea of everything that will be on the test, and it's good for information you can't easily find anywhere else, but I recommend trying to study from the most official/reputable sources as possible.)
Are you in AZ? If so, I could really use your help
