1,001 questions about the ASTB (post your scores & ask your questions here!)

[flyer4life2020]

Use a program like anti micro. YouTube a guide for it.

Ok yeah, I was using something like this but I just didn't know how to connect this to Janz, once you are on janz how does it read it? If that makes sense, I'm not much of a gamer but I'm definitely getting it all setup it's just the last step I'm lost on.

 

[The2ndworst]

Ok yeah, I was using something like this but I just didn't know how to connect this to Janz, once you are on janz how does it read it? If that makes sense, I'm not much of a gamer but I'm definitely getting it all setup it's just the last step I'm lost on.

You shouldn’t need to connect it to Janz. You just need to set up the binds correctly. Janz just uses keyboard and mouse entries, anti micro allows you to bind throttle inputs to keys and mouse.

 

[flyer4life2020]

For the PBM I am a little confused, is it similar to the Janz sim where whenever you hear odd you press the clutch and even trigger, or does the test tell you to just focus on one ear and just that? Since people tend to say to lean on one side to help.

 

[FlyingGamecock]

For the PBM I am a little confused, is it similar to the Janz sim where whenever you hear odd you press the clutch and even trigger, or does the test tell you to just focus on one ear and just that? Since people tend to say to lean on one side to help.

It will tell you to target one ear at a time. You will never use both ears on the real test

 

[Skylanepilot1981]

Results drop when the 31OCT2022 board thread hits 500 pages

A little further and we’ll be half way there!

 

[Biff42]

Ok yeah, I was using something like this but I just didn't know how to connect this to Janz, once you are on janz how does it read it? If that makes sense, I'm not much of a gamer but I'm definitely getting it all setup it's just the last step I'm lost on.

Whats a good link to the Janz sim. Everytime i click the link from one of the previous post it never open also i have joystick/throttle set up for flight sim on Xbox, will this work?

 

[elariosa95]

Whats a good link to the Janz sim. Everytime i click the link from one of the previous post it never open also i have joystick/throttle set up for flight sim on Xbox, will this work?

Which internet browser are you using? I don't think it works with Safari, but Google Chrome runs it fine

 

[2bbknack]

I took the test for the first time last week, scoring a 56 5/7/6. Whereas most people on here seem to feel they are doing poorly during the test and then score well, I felt I was doing *stellar* during the test and got what I consider mediocre scores.

Won't talk about the OAR much, I feel my score is good enough so I probably won't study for it much before my next attempt. Everything about the OAR has been said countless times by others on this forum.

For the ANIT, I studied Kyle's drive and a couple of sets of quizlet flashcards. I took any practice exam I could find and scored very well on them. I also knew a lot of the aviation knowledge already as I study Aerospace Engineering and am halfway through my PPL. The night before the exam, I took the 5th and 6th ANIT practice exam from this test bank and scored 29/30 and 28/30. Ofc I knew the actual test would be way harder than these, and it was, but I thought it put me in a decent spot. When taking the real ANIT, it stopped asking me questions about 10 minutes in (I think there was 15 min max?). I felt very confident, I thought there were only 3 or 4 I didn't know. The only questions I can remember were how do you control the pitch and roll of the a/c, and maybe a question about a shirt color.

I used the compass trick on the UAV. I practiced on this flash card set on shuffle. During the actual UAV, I only missed one and got each one within 1.5-2.5 seconds. This doesn't seem to be slower than the others that scored well?

I prepared for the PBM using jantzen's sim with the X52 HOTAS. I used AntiMicro, and set every deadzone to 6000. I practiced on a 1600x900 24" 60Hz monitor. I didn't practice with the dichotic listening because I knew it wasn't totally accurate. The night before the exam, I practiced and recorded my scores through 40 trials, with the difficulty maxed out for 60 seconds. My average stick and throttle scores were respectively 126 and 122. Maybe these scores can give you some sort of baseline to practice for (and exceed). The biggest surprise when taking the actual PBM was that there wasn't hardly any deadzone, so coupled with the fact that it was easier than max difficulty on jantzens it felt really easy. Like I've been saying, I thought I did really well when it was only testing stick and throttle. It then tests your dichotic listening, which I don't think I missed any on, and then it tests dichotic with the stick and throttle. Again, felt I did real well tracking the stick and throttle and I think I only missed a couple dichotic inputs. The emergency checklists only had me turn the E and i knobs on the throttle and then click the i button once complete. Did anyone get any other buttons in their checklists? When I took it, I let the screen flash red for 2/3 of the scenarios but ultimately resolved each one. Besides taking a while, the only thing I can think of that I screwed up here is that I started to turn the knob in step 2 before I turned step 1's knob?

Ultimately I can't be too mad that I didn't score well since I only studied for a week and a half. I have a month and a half before my next attempt and I'm not really sure where to focus my efforts in. I'm applying for SNA, and my goal is to get my AQR and PFAR to at least an 8 each as I hear you essentially need 8's and above to be selected right now. But I cannot find much information on what test goes into what score. I read the AQR depends heavily on the math portion of the OAR, so I guess I'll go over those concepts again. As far as the PFAR goes, I plan on doing Jantzen's every day and maybe have a friend give me some emergency scenarios while I'm practicing. I've read that the ANIT is heavily weighted here, so I'll continue studying for that. I'll probably reread the success stories on this thread again and really pay attention to what they say about the PBM. Hope this helps someone.

 

[Biff42]

Which internet browser are you using? I don't think it works with Safari, but Google Chrome runs it fine

Ahhh, yeah I've been using Safari?

 

[FlyingGamecock]

I took the test for the first time last week, scoring a 56 5/7/6. Whereas most people on here seem to feel they are doing poorly during the test and then score well, I felt I was doing *stellar* during the test and got what I consider mediocre scores.

Won't talk about the OAR much, I feel my score is good enough so I probably won't study for it much before my next attempt. Everything about the OAR has been said countless times by others on this forum.

For the ANIT, I studied Kyle's drive and a couple of sets of quizlet flashcards. I took any practice exam I could find and scored very well on them. I also knew a lot of the aviation knowledge already as I study Aerospace Engineering and am halfway through my PPL. The night before the exam, I took the 5th and 6th ANIT practice exam from this test bank and scored 29/30 and 28/30. Ofc I knew the actual test would be way harder than these, and it was, but I thought it put me in a decent spot. When taking the real ANIT, it stopped asking me questions about 10 minutes in (I think there was 15 min max?). I felt very confident, I thought there were only 3 or 4 I didn't know. The only questions I can remember were how do you control the pitch and roll of the a/c, and maybe a question about a shirt color.

I used the compass trick on the UAV. I practiced on this flash card set on shuffle. During the actual UAV, I only missed one and got each one within 1.5-2.5 seconds. This doesn't seem to be slower than the others that scored well?

I prepared for the PBM using jantzen's sim with the X52 HOTAS. I used AntiMicro, and set every deadzone to 6000. I practiced on a 1600x900 24" 60Hz monitor. I didn't practice with the dichotic listening because I knew it wasn't totally accurate. The night before the exam, I practiced and recorded my scores through 40 trials, with the difficulty maxed out for 60 seconds. My average stick and throttle scores were respectively 126 and 122. Maybe these scores can give you some sort of baseline to practice for (and exceed). The biggest surprise when taking the actual PBM was that there wasn't hardly any deadzone, so coupled with the fact that it was easier than max difficulty on jantzens it felt really easy. Like I've been saying, I thought I did really well when it was only testing stick and throttle. It then tests your dichotic listening, which I don't think I missed any on, and then it tests dichotic with the stick and throttle. Again, felt I did real well tracking the stick and throttle and I think I only missed a couple dichotic inputs. The emergency checklists only had me turn the E and i knobs on the throttle and then click the i button once complete. Did anyone get any other buttons in their checklists? When I took it, I let the screen flash red for 2/3 of the scenarios but ultimately resolved each one. Besides taking a while, the only thing I can think of that I screwed up here is that I started to turn the knob in step 2 before I turned step 1's knob?

Ultimately I can't be too mad that I didn't score well since I only studied for a week and a half. I have a month and a half before my next attempt and I'm not really sure where to focus my efforts in. I'm applying for SNA, and my goal is to get my AQR and PFAR to at least an 8 each as I hear you essentially need 8's and above to be selected right now. But I cannot find much information on what test goes into what score. I read the AQR depends heavily on the math portion of the OAR, so I guess I'll go over those concepts again. As far as the PFAR goes, I plan on doing Jantzen's every day and maybe have a friend give me some emergency scenarios while I'm practicing. I've read that the ANIT is heavily weighted here, so I'll continue studying for that. I'll probably reread the success stories on this thread again and really pay attention to what they say about the PBM. Hope this helps someone.

Biggest tip I can give for the PBM is write down the emergency procedures and set the dials before it ever says what the emergency is. That way as soon as it comes up, you can clear it. Don’t let the screen ever flash red, just click the clutch when the audio gets done. And as soon as you clear that emergency, preset the knob for the next emergency and do the same thing. The emergency procedures are done in the same order they are given to you in the instructions. Good luck!

 

[gilan101]

Hey everyone,

I have not posted for some time. I joined this community a while ago wanting to become a pilot unfortunately due to color vision issues all the branches denied me. I ended up becoming an intelligence officer, go figure. I wanted to offer my Anki flashcard deck (758 cards) I made 2 years ago. It is a bit messy and not the perfect quality but it's what I used to do well. The links are below. And I wish you all the best of luck!

AnkiWeb

My deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/557881853

 

[redsharpie]

I took the ASTB today and wanted to pay it forward. Didn't do as well as I wanted but won't be retaking. 62 7/6/7

Math: The amount I studied for math was comparable to the ANIT. Over the summer I did the Khan Academy SAT prep until I had at least proficiency in each topic. The week before September, I went through all the math worksheets in Kyle's drive. Starting a week before the test, I lightly went through the worksheets in Gomez's and Holly's drives. The most helpful worksheet to me was the 100 problem Test with Answers worksheet in Gomez's. Gives a quick recap of important rules to remember. During the test, I thought I was bombing it. There were probably 14-20 questions and I finished with around 25 out of 40 minutes remaining. The main topics I remember were volume, solve system of equations, and logarithms. There was a problem with binary numbers and one matrix problem.

Reading: Did not study. As everyone's said, the reading was beyond boring and I had to read each passage multiple times because I kept zoning out. I went the full time and didn't finish.
Do as everyone has said and choose what is in the passage and not information that you infer.

Mechanical: STEM background so I wasn't too worried. Night before I briefly went through the MUST READ-MECH STUDY GUIDE (PART 1) document in Holly's. Test was all conceptual. Work, forces, angular velocities, a few electrical things, etc.

ANIT: Studied a ton for this so I definitely feel disppointed with my confidence for each answer. The test finished really fast. Like 5 minutes in fast. Did not feel great but here's what I did to study. Over the summer I went through the FAA Pilot Handbook. I got up to around Chapter 13-14, studying about an hour a night. Then I switched over to the tests and flashcards like the Cram set. Memorized everything like Aircraft carrier shirt colors, airport operation light signal meanings, atmosphere layers and clouds, parts of a ship/plane, history, etc. Almost nothing I studied showed up besides flight control surfaces and principles of flight. As FlyingGamecock said, had some VOR and obscure questions where you just have to make an educated guess.

UAV: Learned the piece of paper trick here and did these flashcards for a few minutes a day for two weeks. The actual test was harder. The average speed I answered was probably around 3-5 seconds and I got 3 wrong. None of the questions look like the compass rose problem. They all looked like the map with the heading arrow.

PBM: I did Jantzen's sim with no joystick/throttle every now and then. Starting two weeks before, I did it at least once every day. The actual test was insanely hard for me. The individual tests were ok but once they started lumping everything together, it became difficult to track things. If you want to do well, definitely look into getting the setup everyone else has been talking about. For emergency protocol, write down the actions and just follow.

Hope this helps and good luck to you all.

 

[flyer4life2020]

Biggest tip I can give for the PBM is write down the emergency procedures and set the dials before it ever says what the emergency is. That way as soon as it comes up, you can clear it. Don’t let the screen ever flash red, just click the clutch when the audio gets done. And as soon as you clear that emergency, preset the knob for the next emergency and do the same thing. The emergency procedures are done in the same order they are given to you in the instructions. Good luck!

Ok to clarify, "set the dials before it ever says what the emergency is" so it will tell us either on the screen by alerting us via flashes or through the audio headset. So say the order is Fire, Engine, Prop Malf. So we immediately set the appropriate knobs for that Fire emergency. Then immediately proceeded by pressing the clutch to reset and adjusting the knobs for the Engine emergency, and so on. Lastly, what do you mean don't let the screen ever flash red, when and why would it do that?

 

[FlyingGamecock]

Ok to clarify, "set the dials before it ever says what the emergency is" so it will tell us either on the screen by alerting us via flashes or through the audio headset. So say the order is Fire, Engine, Prop Malf. So we immediately set the appropriate knobs for that Fire emergency. Then immediately proceeded by pressing the clutch to reset and adjusting the knobs for the Engine emergency, and so on. Lastly, what do you mean don't let the screen ever flash red, when and why would it do that?

Before the emergency section begins, it will give you the instructions on how to clear the emergencies. That is the same order you will be given the emergencies in the test. When an emergency occurs, it will notify you through the headphones. If you do nothing, the screen will flash red to indicate that your time is almost up to clear the emergency. For the sake of the example, let’s assume it’s 5 seconds after the audio tells you what the emergency is. But since you know the order and wrote down the instructions, you can preset the knobs. So when the audio comes up telling you there is an emergency, your knobs are already set and you can hit the clutch to clear it in about 1 second. So your screen will never flash red because you already had the knobs set.

 

[FlyingGamecock]

Ok to clarify, "set the dials before it ever says what the emergency is" so it will tell us either on the screen by alerting us via flashes or through the audio headset. So say the order is Fire, Engine, Prop Malf. So we immediately set the appropriate knobs for that Fire emergency. Then immediately proceeded by pressing the clutch to reset and adjusting the knobs for the Engine emergency, and so on. Lastly, what do you mean don't let the screen ever flash red, when and why would it do that?

I believe it will also say somewhere on the bottom of the screen which emergency it is, but just listen to the headphones to be sure.