Just sent this via email to another member, but figure that since I just spent a whole class period not paying attention and doing this instead that I could at least spread the love to other people and justify my self-applied bad student status.
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It’s kind of a hard test to describe… roomie took it a month before me and all he could tell me was ‘it’s nothing like the book.’ Apparently they went to a new test version that doesn’t 100% match with ARCO. Taking the test he was sort of right… they weren’t the EXACT same questions (he was expecting a t-28 to be flying around for apperception and wiring diagrams to be involved), but if you UNDERSTAND the concepts in the test prep books then you’ll do okay. Definitely not a test you want to stress yourself over… easy for me to say because when I took it I was just going along with the roomie (denied once for BDCP as test grades weren’t good enough) to see what I could score (plus I wanted to get better scores than him ;-) ). Ended up having a great time up there talking to the Master Chief and hanging out at Jax airshow (he got us some VIP tix). Still don’t know if I’ll actually apply for Navy or Coastie (bad eyes), but I’ll see if I can kind of walk you through the test.
You’ll start with math. About 30 questions. Basic algebra and geometry. Unfortunately I hadn’t taken one of those classes in years, and starting a 200 question test by trying to remember what 1^0 was was frustrating. If I take the test again this will be the section I focus on. Felt like I did bad, finished with literally 30sec to go (held off on a random fuel-consumption guess til the end). BUT, my score for math/english sections ended up as an 8, so guess I didn’t do bad, but know I could’ve pulled the 9 if I’d kept up to speed on the math. http://www.nomi.med.navy.mil/nami/astb/astbwebsitewriteup.htm#B – check out their test prep, best I’ve seen. No calculator, btw.
English is english. Test prep is what the test looks like. Hard to learn this stuff if you don’t already know it. Roomie didn’t and scored middle of the road on the section. Fortunately I am a former 1-year english major (thank you, community college), so I knew it all no problem… even without college level stuff. I was done with the section in about 10 minutes… probably what saved my AQR. Oh, know the differences between They’re, There and Their, as well as to, two and too. If for no other reason than two keep people from thinking your an idiot. May, shall, will and should might’ve been on they’re to.
Mechanical Comp is where the test gets fun. LOTS of pulleys… nothing difficult though. Couple “what is the mechanical advantage?” and they’d show you a setup of two pulleys, and the answers were 1, 2, 3 or 4. Then two questions later you’d see the same diagram but it would be “If you pulled on end A, in which direction would pulley B move?” Then later, same picture “If end B is pulled 12 inches, how far and in what direction does end A move?”. I’m no physicist by any means (I know F=ma and High to low… that’s about it), but I thought this section was very easy. Hobbies such as working on cars helped out A LOT. Numerous engine questions (what does water do in an engine, what is the brayton cycle, a thermostat does this type of stuff). Also a lot of weights moving up ramps. I had no problem here, so hard to say where you’d get stuck. Tuning fork stumped my roomate I think (if ball hits fork, where does ball end up… answer is it moves away). Basic electrical diagrams were on there too. Just power source and resistors mainly. Know basic circuitry (radio shack sells some good electronics guides). Almost all of the questions on the test are directly related to aviation for you… very real world. Hydraulics are on there… check out question 5 on the practice exam from NOMI… I had that one. Also some fluid-in-a-pipe stuff (if you want fluid to go here, what do you open/close?). I thought ARCO was pretty good at getting a handle on this stuff, check out all of it (read the WHOLE book… looking at it when I got home I realized there were whole sections I’d skipped over, some because they were in the Chair Force sections).
A private pilot license will get you pretty far in the flight aptitude portion, but not all the way. My biggest WTF’s were LIGHT GUN SIGNALS and AIRPORT LIGHTING. Roomate is CFI and he knew they’d be on there from a previously taken test, so he got me up to speed on the car ride there. Helps a lot to have someone to study with for this part. Not many history questions on mine… roomate had some ‘first man in space’ type stuff. Pay close attention to the wording, they try to catch you more there than anywhere else. They assume a lot of the stuff you already know, so the aim for your attention to detail. Can’t think of an example, but you’ll know what I mean the first time you re-read a question and go “Oh, f*ck.” I did it twice. READ ALL THE ANSWERS, THEN ANSWER THE QUESTION. I caught myself answering wrong multiple times doing this, especially on the spacial apperception. Arco doesn’t give a difficult enough depiction. Recognize that there are differing levels of bank and pitch (know what those terms mean, btw). Makes the section a lot easier when you realize that. I felt like I had tons of time for the apperception portion, and guess I got all of them right… but I erased about 8 halfway through after I caught myself in the wrong mindset (finally read ALL the answers). Know aerodynamics – just the basics. Thrust, Lift, Drag and Weight are goodies, so is Bernoulli and Newton. Know what the roll direction is when the left aileron moves up (Down is up, up is down. That’s just life in Kinja town (thank you Jimmy Buffett)).
Nautical stuff is what pissed me off, largely because I’ve read the Annapolis Seamanship book cover to cover years back when I was thinking of enlisting Coastie, but didn’t retain it all. I KNEW that a noon sextant bearing was important, but couldn’t remember if it gave you latitude or longitude – it was longitude. Some time zone stuff was on there, mainly converting to local if you were at -7 and Zulu was 2345. Pretty simple. Purple pipe is gas, etc. A few “If you are at 30N and 45W where are you? Type of things. Those are hard because my answers were Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Know what a lubber line is, what a sextant measures, what freeboard means, and what the term to describe width of a ship is. I’m 100% confident that if I retook the test I’d get an 8 or 9 on the FOFAR, just had no idea what to expect for questions.
Test ends with a comprehensive section. All sections are covered, but get a little more in depth, and it’s hard to go from ‘Where is the CG?’ to ‘What is the second mast on this ship called’ and back to ‘two blocks on a board… (remember the BOARD HAS WEIGHT), but if you just work through it (a break helps) you’ll do fine
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Questions? Comments?
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It’s kind of a hard test to describe… roomie took it a month before me and all he could tell me was ‘it’s nothing like the book.’ Apparently they went to a new test version that doesn’t 100% match with ARCO. Taking the test he was sort of right… they weren’t the EXACT same questions (he was expecting a t-28 to be flying around for apperception and wiring diagrams to be involved), but if you UNDERSTAND the concepts in the test prep books then you’ll do okay. Definitely not a test you want to stress yourself over… easy for me to say because when I took it I was just going along with the roomie (denied once for BDCP as test grades weren’t good enough) to see what I could score (plus I wanted to get better scores than him ;-) ). Ended up having a great time up there talking to the Master Chief and hanging out at Jax airshow (he got us some VIP tix). Still don’t know if I’ll actually apply for Navy or Coastie (bad eyes), but I’ll see if I can kind of walk you through the test.
You’ll start with math. About 30 questions. Basic algebra and geometry. Unfortunately I hadn’t taken one of those classes in years, and starting a 200 question test by trying to remember what 1^0 was was frustrating. If I take the test again this will be the section I focus on. Felt like I did bad, finished with literally 30sec to go (held off on a random fuel-consumption guess til the end). BUT, my score for math/english sections ended up as an 8, so guess I didn’t do bad, but know I could’ve pulled the 9 if I’d kept up to speed on the math. http://www.nomi.med.navy.mil/nami/astb/astbwebsitewriteup.htm#B – check out their test prep, best I’ve seen. No calculator, btw.
English is english. Test prep is what the test looks like. Hard to learn this stuff if you don’t already know it. Roomie didn’t and scored middle of the road on the section. Fortunately I am a former 1-year english major (thank you, community college), so I knew it all no problem… even without college level stuff. I was done with the section in about 10 minutes… probably what saved my AQR. Oh, know the differences between They’re, There and Their, as well as to, two and too. If for no other reason than two keep people from thinking your an idiot. May, shall, will and should might’ve been on they’re to.
Mechanical Comp is where the test gets fun. LOTS of pulleys… nothing difficult though. Couple “what is the mechanical advantage?” and they’d show you a setup of two pulleys, and the answers were 1, 2, 3 or 4. Then two questions later you’d see the same diagram but it would be “If you pulled on end A, in which direction would pulley B move?” Then later, same picture “If end B is pulled 12 inches, how far and in what direction does end A move?”. I’m no physicist by any means (I know F=ma and High to low… that’s about it), but I thought this section was very easy. Hobbies such as working on cars helped out A LOT. Numerous engine questions (what does water do in an engine, what is the brayton cycle, a thermostat does this type of stuff). Also a lot of weights moving up ramps. I had no problem here, so hard to say where you’d get stuck. Tuning fork stumped my roomate I think (if ball hits fork, where does ball end up… answer is it moves away). Basic electrical diagrams were on there too. Just power source and resistors mainly. Know basic circuitry (radio shack sells some good electronics guides). Almost all of the questions on the test are directly related to aviation for you… very real world. Hydraulics are on there… check out question 5 on the practice exam from NOMI… I had that one. Also some fluid-in-a-pipe stuff (if you want fluid to go here, what do you open/close?). I thought ARCO was pretty good at getting a handle on this stuff, check out all of it (read the WHOLE book… looking at it when I got home I realized there were whole sections I’d skipped over, some because they were in the Chair Force sections).
A private pilot license will get you pretty far in the flight aptitude portion, but not all the way. My biggest WTF’s were LIGHT GUN SIGNALS and AIRPORT LIGHTING. Roomate is CFI and he knew they’d be on there from a previously taken test, so he got me up to speed on the car ride there. Helps a lot to have someone to study with for this part. Not many history questions on mine… roomate had some ‘first man in space’ type stuff. Pay close attention to the wording, they try to catch you more there than anywhere else. They assume a lot of the stuff you already know, so the aim for your attention to detail. Can’t think of an example, but you’ll know what I mean the first time you re-read a question and go “Oh, f*ck.” I did it twice. READ ALL THE ANSWERS, THEN ANSWER THE QUESTION. I caught myself answering wrong multiple times doing this, especially on the spacial apperception. Arco doesn’t give a difficult enough depiction. Recognize that there are differing levels of bank and pitch (know what those terms mean, btw). Makes the section a lot easier when you realize that. I felt like I had tons of time for the apperception portion, and guess I got all of them right… but I erased about 8 halfway through after I caught myself in the wrong mindset (finally read ALL the answers). Know aerodynamics – just the basics. Thrust, Lift, Drag and Weight are goodies, so is Bernoulli and Newton. Know what the roll direction is when the left aileron moves up (Down is up, up is down. That’s just life in Kinja town (thank you Jimmy Buffett)).
Nautical stuff is what pissed me off, largely because I’ve read the Annapolis Seamanship book cover to cover years back when I was thinking of enlisting Coastie, but didn’t retain it all. I KNEW that a noon sextant bearing was important, but couldn’t remember if it gave you latitude or longitude – it was longitude. Some time zone stuff was on there, mainly converting to local if you were at -7 and Zulu was 2345. Pretty simple. Purple pipe is gas, etc. A few “If you are at 30N and 45W where are you? Type of things. Those are hard because my answers were Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Know what a lubber line is, what a sextant measures, what freeboard means, and what the term to describe width of a ship is. I’m 100% confident that if I retook the test I’d get an 8 or 9 on the FOFAR, just had no idea what to expect for questions.
Test ends with a comprehensive section. All sections are covered, but get a little more in depth, and it’s hard to go from ‘Where is the CG?’ to ‘What is the second mast on this ship called’ and back to ‘two blocks on a board… (remember the BOARD HAS WEIGHT), but if you just work through it (a break helps) you’ll do fine
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Questions? Comments?
