RA-Aus BAK exam

[Parkway]

Has anyone done the RA-Aus BAK exam recently? Any pointers or insights at all would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

[Geoff13]

Parkway I did mine 18 months ago. Just studied the books recommended by the flight school and listened to what my instructors had to say up to that stage of my training.

 

I actually struggled a bit with the weather questions but a bit of extra study in that area got me through.

 

 

[Nightmare]

I did mine about 6 months ago. As Geoff said study up on the material that your instructor recommends. Also maybe I would suggest doing some practice exams, here is a good site, it helped me.

 

 

[DGL Fox]

Parkway, I did mine 2 weeks or so ago, the questions are of a general nature basically a bit of everything of what you have learned since you started, just do a review of what you have done so far and you will be fine, 50 questions and you need an 80% pass and even if you don't get it right the first time the instructor should go through all the questions you got wrong and explain why you were wrong and then all you have to do is go and study up in those areas and try again when you are ready, good luck and don't worry about it to much, just go and do the exam you will be fine.

 

David

 

 

[Bernie Knight]

I think the advice to do a few practice exams is excellent.

 

By doing the practice exams you will soon see its multiple choice with one answer obviously incorrect and a very obviously right answer amongst the three remaining.

 

A number of questions have two answers that are correct - surprising one is better. I found this quite confusing when doing the exam. Once the exam was finished my instructor went through my answers I got wrong and spent a bit of time explaining why one answer was more correct.

 

It is a little confusing why the exam is written that way

 

 

[Parkway]

Yeah it was a bit like that with my pre solo exam, I guess they don't want it to be too obvious and want you to think about it a bit

 

 

[storchy neil]

why not do GA BAK there is an advantage neil

 

 

[Romeo Juliet Whiskey]

why not do GA BAK there is an advantage neil

What is the advantage?

 

 

[storchy neil]

than you RWJ don't have to do it again to go GA very similar questions pass is 80% just don't stress if I could do it you can to neil

 

 

[facthunter]

A multichoice where there is more than one correct answer is incompetently set. There should only be one right /correct answer, or else it's a lottery. Sometimes no answer is correct. Obviously the examiner thought at least one of them was, and they display their ignorance of the subject.. Nev

 

 

[facthunter]

The exam should assess your knowledge of the subject, not try to trick you. The question should be clear and unambiguous. (Like everything in aviation, ideally).Nev.

 

 

[Geoff13]

The 5 RAA exams that I had to do were terribly written, had many questions with multiple correct answers and in general were a very poor test of knowledge but a resonable test of exam technique. I would never have allowed any of them to be used in any subjects that I taught when I was teaching.

 

The complete exam structure needs serious reveiw.

 

 

[Happyflyer]

I'm curious. Is it possible to have an example of multiple correct answers?

 

 

[facthunter]

No one would intentionally do this, but it happens. It's not fair at all on the examinees and often the papers are remarked/ reassessed, when enough fuss is made of it, and that is how it should be.

 

. I was a secondary school teacher at the time these things were becoming popular and setting them takes a lot of time and should be proof read by your peers in case an unintended meaning is affecting the answers. They are easy to mark which is about their only good point. Nev

 

 

[Nightmare]

The 5 RAA exams that I had to do were terribly written, had many questions with multiple correct answers and in general were a very poor test of knowledge but a resonable test of exam technique. I would never have allowed any of them to be used in any subjects that I taught when I was teaching.The complete exam structure needs serious reveiw.

That was my experience. It hasn't changed, I did mine late last year. One aspect bothered me so much I contacted RAAus about it. There were questions in the exam that were on legislation that were superseded. I got them wrong by the test, but in fact they were correct by the new regs. The exam hadn't caught up with the current rules. RAAus said that the exams were under review.

 

 

[spacesailor]

My bad exam question was "what causes icing" , Answer: moisture:

 

Which means Darwin is a very bad place to fly with it's super high moisture content.

 

With questions like that I've no chance of passing the BAK test.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[DGL Fox]

My bad exam question was "what causes icing" , Answer: moisture:Which means Darwin is a very bad place to fly with it's super high moisture content.

With questions like that I've no chance of passing the BAK test.

 

spacesailor

Yes that is the one that I laughed at...moisture... funny answer...

David

 

 

[facthunter]

Without moisture you don't get icing. The South pole is one of the driest places on earth. Unlikely to get icing there even though it's very cold at sea level. Nev

 

 

[Happyflyer]

Carb ice is only possible if there is moisture (humidity) in the air. It is possible in quite warm air. Which answer did you guys think was correct?

 

 

 

[Nightmare]

My bad exam question was "what causes icing" , Answer: moisture:Which means Darwin is a very bad place to fly with it's super high moisture content.

With questions like that I've no chance of passing the BAK test.

 

spacesailor

Cool! Now you've learned something new. Do heaps of study, do heaps of practice exams, and if you fail your BAK, don't worry, you can re-sit the exam even better educated. And do you think when you get your certificate, that's it? As many have said on here, it's your certificate to learn. I'm learning new stuff about aviation all the time.

[facthunter]

Warm air has the capacity to carry water. Cold air doesn't. Nev

 

 

[dsam]

Warm air has the capacity to carry water. Cold air doesn't. Nev

As a kid in Calgary Canada during winter, I would watch my mother hang out freshly washed clothes, only to let them quickly become frozen stiff in minus 30 degrees C weather. Surprisingly, by the end of the next day, she would bring them in, virtually dry. Only later did I find out about sublimation in my physics class, explaining how solid water could become a gas without necessarily becoming a liquid.

It is more correct to say that cold air cannot carry much water (but still does carry a small amount), otherwise the clothes wouldn't have dried.

 

Interestingly, the outdoor relative humidity at minus 30 (or colder) was around 70%. When this same outside air was drawn indoors and heated to 21 degrees, that existing quantity of water in the air represented a relative humidity plunging well below 15%. Needless to say, we boiled water on the stove to add water to the indoor atmosphere, and alleviate constant nose bleeds. Un-oiled wooden furniture rapidly cracked and split, it was so dry

 

I also had great fun shuffling my feet to build up a terrific static charge and zapped my brothers on the ear lobe when they weren't looking! I learned to run fast too:oh yeah:

 

 

[facthunter]

relative humidity is a % of what the parcel of air could carry if it was saturated. It's useful in determining dew point and predicting the formation of fog. Storms in the tropics have so much more energy than any thing near the higher latitudes due to the large amount of water available over warm oceans. It takes heat to change the state from a liquid to a gas, and when that acts in reverse , heat is given out, causing rapid updrafts and deep development cumuliform (Cb) clouds and often cyclones. The source of the energy is the latent heat of vapourisation of water. Nev

 

 

[spacesailor]

FC,

 

I failed my exam, that one question ruined my chance to fly.

 

There is no question about water freezing, but in recreational aviation opposed to civil aviation that one is wrong in all aspects.

 

I understand that jumbo's can get fuel moisture freezing at tens of thousands of feet altitude, but the test is not about civil aviation, they don't use carburettors at that altitude.

 

I have no interest in weighing pax in a commercial plane, then having to calculate the fuel load in Gallons/LBs/liters, so why is it part of the test, is beyond me,

 

spacesailor

 

 

[2tonne]

I found that the exam questions were very poorly expressed, which causes some confusion about what they are actually asking. Not a good way to educate and test people.