Originally Posted by
lstorm2003
Agree w/ satpak77... Lots of the stuff on the FAA writtens are designed to harass, not teach.
Q: "If you turn 5 degrees off coarse and it measure the time it takes to center the needle again to the station blah blah blah, how many minutes are you away from the station?"
A: Well if you actually turn off your coarse to do this in an actual airplane (which no one does) you'll be able to calculate that if you hadn't gone off course, you'd be home by now.
Just memorize the formula they give you or memorize the answer to the questions. It's one of the single most useless calculations in all of modern aviation.
Did it ever dawn on you this example with the distance to station is a mental exercise to develop the ability to think clearly about angles, time and distance relationships? And the FAA is just trying to harass people? Your attitude is not what you will need to become a successful instructor. You do not have to go around mouthing false platitudes about written exams, but you should have more respect for the advanced pilots who write these tests- while they are certainly fallible human beings, many of them have thousands of hours teaching behind them and you have let me see, none according to your other posts. It's fine to say you have no idea how a particular concept could ever find practical application to real flying, but to broadly bash the FAA test writers is going a bit too far.
Pearl- nice job! Keep it up.