Hello everyone,
I just took my first ASTB today and scored a
56 7/7/7. I wanted to put together a quick gouge to let everyone know about the
new PBM test portion and the addition of Terrain Identification.
I started studying in March but took a couple of breaks due to personal issues. During the last month leading up to the exam, I studied nearly every day, focusing primarily on math and the PBM.
Math: I initially used the Barron’s Military Flight Aptitude Tests book. This gave me a solid foundation in the math concepts but lacked the complexity seen on the exam. I then started using the ASTB Prep App and the OAR Tutoring app (the one with the setting sun logo). These were much more similar to the actual exam. I spent my final two weeks studying on this website:
https://oar-study-guide.vercel.app/learn. I highly recommend this because I saw a few questions from this site that were very similar, if not identical, to questions on my test.
Surprisingly, I didn’t see any logarithms or radicals on my exam. This really killed my confidence and made me think I wasn’t going to score well. It was mostly basic probability, some geometry, and exponent rules. I only saw one problem where I had no clue what to do. It used what looked like the Cancer zodiac sign. It was something like A
B = 4a - AB. What is B if A
6 = 5?
Reading: This section was fairly similar to the OAR Tutoring app. Expect the passages to be extremely boring.
Mechanical: I have never taken a physics class, so I was basically starting from zero. The OAR Tutoring app was amazing for this. Some questions were exactly the same as those on the test. The section was mostly conceptual, with a few calculations. If you do well on the app’s tests, you should be fine. I don’t think I did great, and I easily could have done better if I had spent more time preparing for this section.
ANIT: I only used the CRAM flashcards and the ASTB Prep App for this section. The flashcards were much more helpful. Most of the questions were related to aviation. I don’t think I did great in this section. If I could change anything, I would have done some more Quizlet sets and studied the FAA handbook.
NATFI: I just answered everything honestly. I scored a 65 on the LPSS.
UAV: I exclusively used the ASTB Prep App. It is functionally identical to the actual test. I was consistently getting 100% of the questions correct in under 1.10 seconds. I didn’t bother with the compass method; I just practiced a few times at a slower pace to nail down the pattern recognition. It only took a couple of days to average around 1.5 seconds. I didn’t miss any on the exam and probably averaged about 1.50 seconds.
Don’t practice with audio for this section because there is a lot of delay on the exam. If you’re fast enough, the audio won’t even play if the next UAV has you select the same direction.
Terrain ID: I learned that this section had been added back the afternoon before my exam. I quickly learned the compass trick from YouTube and ground out practice sessions on the ASTB Prep App. I probably averaged 75% correct in my prep. The actual exam was much easier.
PBM: I used TBAS Study Pro from Steam with an X52 Pro. For a few months, I spent two minutes on the joystick, two minutes on the throttle, and two minutes using both, repeating the sequence three times per sitting a few times a week.
About a month before my test, I started doing the Navy Assessment on TBAS once a day. I skipped the Terrain ID and UAV portions. During my last two weeks, I averaged around 80 on tracking and scored a high of 84 on the morning of my exam.
The throttle sensitivity was very different from what I had prepared for. On TBAS, I would set the throttle sensitivity to 3, but I had only practiced at 1, so I overshot the tracker a lot. I practiced with the joystick set to 1, and that was pretty similar to the exam.
The DLT used the joystick trigger for even numbers and the clutch button for odd numbers. The audio on the exam is very bad, like Ghost Adventures spirit box bad. The audio did not come as quickly as on TBAS.
The emergencies are pretty easy. The knobs can be set to high, low, or neutral. I wrote the procedures down on paper for reference. My emergency order was Fire, Engine, Propeller. I cleared them all within two seconds and did my best on the tracking portion.
NEW PBM SECTION: I forgot the name of this section and was very surprised to see it at the very end of the exam.
You have 90 seconds to answer as many questions as possible. You get one point for each correct answer and lose one point for each incorrect answer. You get two attempts and are given a score for each one. I think I got a 41 on the first attempt and a 48 on the second.
There are two types of questions in this section: arrow questions and color questions. There is a box in the lower left and another in the lower right where you select your answer using the corresponding arrow key on the keyboard. The “question” appears in a third box above the answer boxes.
For the color questions, the “question” box will display the word RED or BLUE, and the text itself will be one of those two colors. The answer boxes will also display the words RED or BLUE, with the text appearing in one of those two colors. You are supposed to look at the “question” box, identify the color of the text, and then select the answer that spells out that color. The question and answer boxes alternate between RED and BLUE and change colors.
For the arrow questions, the “question” box will display a series of five arrows pointing in a mix of left and right directions. The answer boxes will display similar sequences. You look at the directions of the two outermost arrows in the “question” box and then select the answer whose middle arrow points in the same direction, using the corresponding arrow key on the keyboard.
I provided an illustration of both question types to explain them better. Please excuse my MS Paint skills. You will receive a mix of arrow and color questions throughout this section.
