So last week I was attending Module 1 revision week at Bristol Ground School.
This is a requirement before you are allowed to sit the exams and takes places in Clevedon which is about 2.5 hours away from me.
There are some cheap B&B’s around and I stayed with a lovely couple in a village just outside Clevedon which cost a very reasonable £30 a night.
Bristol is a school which seems to be mainly ex military men who are all super knowledgeable in their areas. If you have something that you need help with, they will get an answer for you.
Your first day will start with an introduction from Alex Whittingham who you will know was the owner of the school. He then introduces all his teachers and gives you a bit of background about them all. They are all pretty much former military men and some also have some civilian airline experience also.
From this point it’s in at the deep end, we went straight into instrumentation.
The days are long 8:50am – 5pm. You do get a break of about 10-15 mins every 1.5 hours or so and a 1 hour lunch. I must admit, sometimes by 5pm you are seriously burned out. Every day at night I did some questions in the question bank.
Our class was once again mainly military guys getting their ATPL, one licence conversion and about 6 of us “self improvers” so a mixed bag overall.
As always there are people at various different stages in their studies. This week was good to try and find out where you are in relation to everybody else.
By Wednesday I had a decision to make. I had already decided 2 weeks before that I wasn’t going to sit General Navigation yet and will sit it at the end. The reason for this is that maths is not my strongest subject and General Navigation was taking up so much of my time the other three subjects were getting neglected.
I didn’t feel quite ready to sit the remaining three exams either which are Met, Human Performance and Instrumentation. I decided that there was no need to rush into it and pushed my exams back 1 month to the start of January. More time studying can’t really hurt can it? Also I think I will be more than prepared to sit these three exams by then.
The week was full on but on the whole not that painful, sometimes it helps having someone in front of you explaining and being able to ask questions.
We managed to “escape” around 3pm on the Friday which was nice as you can try to miss the traffic. Some people were sitting the exams at Bristol the following week, others at other centres in a few week and some the following month.
Between now and my January sitting I will just spend my time going through the question bank.
Oh yeah, when you first walk into the school you will see Noush sitting on reception. No doubt by this point you would have communicated with her at some point.
