Hello Airwarriors!
I’ve used this site pretty extensively the past month or two preparing for my test and now that it’s finally over I feel as though I owe the community a huge thank you and some insight to my experience that may offer some others some much needed help. My main study material used was the Barron’s ASTB test prep, Youtube, Kahns Academy, and lastly this amazing forum.
Took the test on October 9th for the first time and scored a 55 7/8/8
Math Skills Test
I was pretty behind the game studying for this, I’m 29 years old and haven’t taken a math class in quite some time. With that being said I started off using the Barron’s ASTB prep book that so many others have mentioned before. I went over the math section until I knew how to do every problem and this involved
a lot of hours on YouTube, and Kahn’s academy…I’m almost embarrassed to say the first day I was googling how to do long division again – yes it was that bad. Now that we’re all carrying around cellphones with calculators it’s not very often we do problems by hand anymore. I will say that these test prep books WILL NOT prepare you as much as you need for the test but they are a good start. I’ll attach another study guide I found from these forums at the bottom that’s more advanced you will need to know. Pay particular attention to probability, exponent equations, averages of #’s, and DTR problems. I didn’t see any logarithm questions, but that’s probably because I wasn’t doing good enough to get them. Also keep in mind there’s a formulas tab on the side that’s available during your math test that tells you the formulas for a lot of geometry problems and Pi which is helpful because you don’t need to memorize it.
Reading Comprehension Test
There’s really nothing to say here other than the paragraphs are long and extremely dry mostly relating to the military. My advice is to take your time and read the material carefully. Go over the answers one by one and rule them out. ONLY USE the knowledge gained in the paragraph to answer the questions, don’t assume anything or use outside knowledge. I only used the two-practice test in the Barron’s book to prepare for this portion. I also ran out of time on this section, but I was going for accuracy over speed.
Mechanical Comprehension
The Barron’s prep book does an excellent job preparing you for this section, but take it a step further and learn about Pulleys, and Levers (know all 3 types) especially. Know how to calculate the distance to balance a fulcrum with two weights on either end. Also know about Bernoulli’s law which comes into play for the ANIT section as well. Overall for myself this section is a lot of common-sense type problems and questions. If you understand problems that say “If this happens, what will this do” you should be okay here.
Aviation and Nautical Information
For this section I used the Barron’s book again, and a set of flash cards that I’ll have to give credit to someone else for making on this forum. Additionally, from someone else’s recommendation I also used the FAA Pilot’s handbook of Aeronautical knowledge. Know every single part of the aircraft and exactly what it does and what effect it will have on the plane. You’ll also need to know about general airspace knowledge as well as the history of naval aviation which I think is covered pretty well in the note cards I’ll link at the bottom. This section isn’t just about planes though, you will be asked about ship terms as well so be prepared for that. Overall, I think I did the best in this section or at least I was the most confident.
Naval Aviation Trait Facet Inventory
This section just sucks and there’s no preparing for it. You will choose between two answers that describe you and the answers they give you are pretty horrible and most likely won’t ever be what you actually would do. However, you just need to pick the best answer.
PBM
You’ll start with the spatial orientation tests, which if you follow the advice of everyone and just use the damn compass trick, you’ll ace this section. That’s all I did and I managed to get every one in about 1.2-1.5 seconds with only 1 mistake.
Dichotic listening – I just removed the earmuff that wasn’t my target ear and it made this extremely easy. It’s a little tricky to do when you’re tracking the targets and listening at the same time, but if you’re quick enough I think it makes this section a breeze.
Tracking – I bought a stick and throttle and played some hours on Warthunder, but I’m not sure how much it helped because the actually PBM is just different in general. It was nice to already have a feel of the controls though. So overall, I would say it definitely helped me in that aspect. I will say again what everyone has before me – this section is rough and it’s going to be a complete mess, but just stay calm and continue tracking the targets as best as you can. Don’t give up and just stick through with it to the end. At times I was no where near either target and still scored very well on this section. DON’T FORGET to write your emergency procedures down and do them quickly and accurately. I stopped tracking completely and took care of the emergencies in about 2-3 seconds then went back to tracking.
Below is all the study material I used, if anyone has any questions feel free to ask and sorry about the novel I posted. I hope someone can use this and benefit from it, like I benefited from so many others experiences before me. Last but not least, the biggest wealth of knowledge is on these forums. I gained more from these forums then I did form any single study material.
Thank you again everyone, I couldn’t have done it without you!
UAV Flash cards -
https://www.proprofs.com/flashcards/story.php?title=_36014
ANIT Flash cards -
https://www.cram.com/flashcards/astb-aviation-nautical-information-test-anit-comprehensive-4718163
ASTB: 73 9/7/8
