The manual retains its high quality illustrations and covers attitude instrument flying and basic instrument flight maneuvers from the perspective of both analog instruments and glass cockpits. The manual is a worthwhile reference for any certificated instrument pilot or anyone working on the instrument rating. Its more detailed coverage of navigation systems, flight instruments and weather hazards such as icing also make it a worthwhile read for non-instrument pilots.

A PDF of the manual can be downloaded from the FAA’s website: Instrument Flying Handbook, FAA-H-8083-15B. While you are there you can also download the Instrument Procedures Handbook which goes into more detail about instrument procedures in the departure, en route and arrival phases of flight.

Each handbook is split into two volumes and are available as PDF downloads from the FAA’s Aircraft Handbooks & Manuals page, or by clicking on the links below:

• FAA-H-8083-31, Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook-Airframe Volume 1 (PDF)
• FAA-H-8083-31, Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook-Airframe Volume 2 (PDF)
• FAA-H-8083-32, Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook-Powerplant Volume 1 (PDF)
• FAA-H-8083-32, Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook-Powerplant Volume 2 (PDF)
  

The material for the General exam, the third of the three AMT exams, is covered in two volumes published in 2008 and 2011:

• Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook – General (multiple PDFs)
  
• Aviation Maintenance Handbook — General — Addendum/Human Factors (PDF)

Prior to this review the Lighter than Air question pools included a fair number of questions that were not relevant to Lighter than air operations. This is a common situation repeated in many of the popular study guides and test prep sites and is frustrating for Students and CFIs alike. Dave came to us looking for a way to provide access to a more tailored question set that was focused on the needs of Balloonists. In working together over the course of the past two months we have made big strides towards creating a question pool that is far more representative of the material required for Hot Air Balloon, Gas balloon and Airship operations. Under Dave’s expert eye we have taken out around 200 questions leaving just under 400 that cover the topics common to all categories of aircraft along with the questions specific to balloon operation. In addition we have reviewed the learning statements and cross checked against the required knowledge areas prescribed in the respective FAA Knowledge Test Handbooks to make sure that all the appropriate topics are covered.
The Hot Air Balloon question pool is now available to all Private and Commercial subscribers. We are continuing to work on the questions to develop explanations and supporting materials to further assist students working towards their Balloon ratings.

Supporting Links:
Private Pilot Knowledge test guide (PDF, 2011)
Commercial Pilot Knowledge test guide (PDF, 2011)

Email exam results & View all practice exam results. To make it easier to review and share your exam results (eg. with your Instructor) I have added some extra features to the Stats pages. When you are looking at the results from a specific practice exam You can now enter and email address and email this result to someone, to get a sign off from your CFI for example. On the main stats page you can now view a list of all your past practice exams so you can find any of your past results to allow you to review or share these as needed.

Online Aviation Library Once you have logged in if you look at the right-hand menu you will see an ‘Aviation Library’ section containing some of the FAA’s key textbooks and material that you can now read directly within the website, no need to download and view the PDF in a separate application. These full color books contain much of the background material for the pilot licenses and instrument rating. You can now study the material here on the site and then use the test prep section to review the FAA’s questions and test yourself on the relevant topics.

The link to the online edition is: http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/

The first article, ‘Practice makes proficient‘, gives some guidelines on what makes for good practice – make it count (don’t fly the same hour over and over again), make it planned (schedule your training so it happens), making it entertaining (we don’t like doing things that are boring), make it better (keep track of how you did, aim to improve on the next flight).

A second article gives some guidelines and links to resources on the different types of official recurrency programs – the Flight Review and Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC). This includes links to useful documents such as the guide to Conducting an Effective Flight Review and IPC guidance.

For the instrument rated pilots out there the third article addresses the particular challenges of maintaining instrument currency and talks about the differences between being Current and being Proficient.

A final article, “Getting back in the Game‘, touches on how to get back into flying after some time off and gives some thoughts on the best way to regain your knowledge and the practical aviation skills you need to fly safely.

There are lots of other articles in this edition and they are all well worth a read. You can find this edition and links to many of the past editions of the FAA Safety Briefing at this address: http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/

For those of us who cant make it to the mountains just yet we can get a taste of what this type of flying is like from some of the great online videos that pilots are posting on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. I came across a video of the approach, landing and take off from the Hidden Splendor strip in eastern Utah and thought that this is a great example of some of the cool things you can see and do in a plane.

Here’s a map of the general area using Google’s terrain view so you can get a better idea of the topography of the area. The strip is under the green arrow and runs roughly NNW-SSE and you land to the north, take off to the south. In addition to the backcountry strip the other entertaining part is the approach flown along the canyon of the Muddy River which is the twisty-turny canyon to the SSE of the strip.

View Larger Map

If you look at the sectional charts the strip is not marked but its on the far eastern edge of the Las Vegas sectional. So now you know roughly where it is and what the terrain looks like nearby, have a look at the video. The flight starts out in the open before entering the muddy creek canyon, near the bottom right of the map section shown above. Follow the flight on the terrain map above to get a better feel for what you are seeing and where you are. More discussion of the video can be found on the Backcountry Pilots forum where the video was originally posted. Thanks to ‘Skypony’ for posting the original video of the flight – Enjoy!

Cover of FAA Safety Briefing, July/August 2010

If you haven’t already seen it, the latest copy of the FAA’s Safety Briefing is available as a PDF download from their website: http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/ and it has some really useful weather-related articles this month.

This month’s edition covers topics like:

• Weather flying – a framework for the go/no-go decision
• Density Altitude – what is it, what can it do to you and your airplane
• Online Weather Briefings – Guide to key resources and how to use them
• Datalink Weather – Using this emerging technology in flight

There are many other articles and useful tips so its well worth having a look. If you want to grab it now, click to download the current briefing as a PDF. They also make past editions available on the FAA Safety Briefing website and you can also subscribe to receive subsequent editions of the briefing via email.

What information is stored?

Every time you take an exam just about every thing is saved into the database. This includes such information as:

• Exam Date
• Start time, finish time
• Overall score
• The chapters you selected, the questions in each chapter
• The results for each individual question, including your answer selection for each question.

How can this be used?

When you grade an individual exam you will see an overall grade for the whole test along with the results for each question. At the bottom of each graded exam is a list of any questions that you got wrong along with a link to a Printable Results page.

Link to printable results at the end of each graded exam

By using this link you can get a more detailed Summary Results report of each exam detailing the questions you answered correctly and, perhaps more importantly, the questions you got wrong. This is very similar to the results sheet you will get when you take the real exam and is shown below. This format is great for printing out for your instructor as it gives them all the information they need about your practice exam and clearly shows them the areas in which you may need a bit more work. Once you This is also what your instructor will want to see in order to sign you off to take the actual knowledge test.

The exam summary results showing all questions and listing incorrect questions by learning code

By selecting [SHOW STATS] at the top of the summary page you can also see more detailed information on each incorrect question – the question itself and your answer history for this question (See below). If you keep getting a question wrong then this indicates you need to do a bit more work understanding the theory behind the question. Looking at the incorrect answers you have selected in the past will help identify where your misunderstanding might be.

The extended results view shows more details for the questions you got wrong

Cumulative Exam Stats

As you take more exams, you build up a history of your recent exams. This can be seen on the Exam Statistics page which can be reached by clicking on the mini bar chart on the left of your exams in the My Exams section of the Members home page:

Click on the mini bar chart to view more detailed statistics for each exam question pool.

The Exam Statistics page has two main components – the question pool coverage graph and the summary results of your last five exams.

• The Question Pool coverage graph is a bar chart showing the number of questions in each topic area, or chapter, of the exam. The height of the bars indicates the number of questions in that chapter, the orange bar indicates the number of questions you see in that chapter. Once the orange bar reaches the top you have seen each question in that chapter at least once.
• The Summary Results Table shows the summary results from your last five exams. This is helpful to see what you did in previous sessions so you can decide what to practice for your next exam. Each exam date at the top of the table links to the exam Summary Report (as shown above), the Chapter link on the left side of the table links to a detailed list of questions for that chapter (described in more detail below).

Exam Statistics page showing question pool coverage and your last five exam results

The Chapter links take you to the Chapter Question List which list, perhaps not surprisingly, all the questions in that chapter! This is handy so you can review all the questions that are included in a specific chapter.

Each question in a chapter is listed along with a recent performance history for each question.

Questions you haven’t practiced are colored purple so you can spot them easily. For each question you have taken you can see the question plus a graphical result history which shows you how you did the last five times you took this question.

Why is this result history useful?

The results history is a very powerful feature. Over time as you practice the questions you will find there are some you just get right each time and you dont want to keep seeing them so you need a way to stop them appearing in your practice exams. Similarly there are questions you are a bit less certain of and you can get wrong every once in a while, these are questions you want to work on. The results history tracks your last five results so when you create a new practice exam you can do things like create an exam of 10 random questions but ‘leaving out questions that you got right the last 2 times. This will allow you to practice only the questions you’re getting wrong, it wont show you the ones you’ve been getting right.

Practice exams can be customized using your recent results history

Hopefully this illustrates some of the features of the results tracking available on PrepareToTest. I am always open to suggestions on ways to improve the reports, statistics and other features so please feel free to use the comments below to ask for more explanation or suggest improvements. I will try and put together a quick screen cast that shows how these tools can be used in practice on PrepareToTest and I think that will help show how things fit together.