Hardest Gleim chapter

TexasAviation

TexasAviation

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TexasAviation
For those of you who used Gleim materials to study for the written exam, what was the hardest chapter (or "study unit," as they put it) for you to tackle?

I'm using their Part 61 Online Ground School and was breezing right along through the first four chapters and acing the practice tests pretty quickly. Then I hit chapter five, with all the altitude density and balance calculations. It still wasn't super hard, just a lot more time consuming thanks to all the tedious math problems.

Glad that one's behind me! It was more of a challenge than the first four.

Now that I'm about halfway done, I'm wondering what the second half has in store for me. Is it going to be as challenging/math-focused as Chapter 5, or will it be mainly rote memorization like Chapters 1-4?

What was the hardest part for you?
 
I did the same.
Weather is tough.

But, go through the Gleim deal and don't stress too much.
buy the sporty's study buddy written prep after gleim and before the written and do it over and over. Gleim is good but the Study buddy will teach you to use the gleim knowledge to pass the test. Study buddy is only $9 and it did more for me as far as the written then the Gleim course.

Trust me. I 'm a pilot ;)
 
...hard to say - people learn and retain differently as well as have different experiences in life that translate. For example, I was a loadmaster on C-2's in the Navy. So, the weight and balance stuff wasn't that big of a deal for me. What I sucked at was ADF's (I'll never use it so it was a struggle to make myself learn it, as simple as it turned out to be). All the various weather stuff can be overwhelming, but as Bryan said - once you get through the material and you've got the written scheduled start pounding through Study Buddy and you'll get an idea of what you'll see on the written.

From the beginning of my training I was working through 10 or so questions a day and then really picked it up a few weeks before the actual written. You'll get an idea early on going through questions what you don't understand and where you need to buckle down.

It ain't that bad.
 
Weather is, and probably always will be, the hardest subject for me. The rest of it I found pretty simple as long as I studied enough.
 
Time consuming and difficult are not the same.

The most tine consuming part, hands down, is navigation, especially elapsed time problems.

The hardest, IMO, is the regs because they don't always make sense. There is some logic to right of way rules and cloud clearances, but it's still memorization intensive.
 
The flight planning has more steps and brainwork than most everything else.
The rest is just learning the concepts by rote pretty much.
 
I personally always found regs the most difficult.

With other areas, I can often reason through to the answer with just a modicum of understanding of the related subject. Or use the process of elimination to get there.

But regs are far more arbitrary*. I just need to memorize a lot more, since there's often no logical reason for them to be exactly as they are.

But the very toughest for me were the CFI questions about theories of learning. Again, it's hard to reason through to the answers they want.

*Credit to MAKG for beating me to it.
 
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Thanks for the input, guys! I might skip ahead to the navigation chapter to get it out of the way. I'll take a look at Study Buddy, too.

FYI, I'm doing the written exam before anything else. I've got to pass it before I can join the local flying club, according to their rules. I plan to rent a C150 through the club for flight training, which is the most affordable option I've found by far ($59/hour wet).

So if all goes well, I'll pass the written exam in a week or so, get my medical done around the same time, get my membership approved in the flying club by April and start training in May. Woo hoo!
 
TexasAviation said:
Commerce, a tiny town east of Dallas.
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SixPapaCharlie said:
Cool. I am on the west side at 52F
hop on over to dfwpilots.com and see what local things are happening on that forum.
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And keep tuned to what's going on over at the Rockin' M Airport (T14). Us DFW folk on the forums tend to gather there once and a while.... 'specially if the owner, Walt M. is cooking up some Cajun grub...
 
I'd say mine was any of the actual calculation problems. If you had a cheap e6b or misplaced a decimal you end up with a answer that didn't agree with anything. Our professor told us just to memorize the answer and move on.

I hear the ATP calculation questions are 20x worse. You have to choose your answer, as an example, from 1000NM, 1002NM, 1003NM, and 995NM. :dunno:
 
MAKG1 said:
The hardest, IMO, is the regs because they don't always make sense. There is some logic to right of way rules and cloud clearances, but it's still memorization intensive.
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This for me. Problems that can be logically worked out aren't as tough as things that simply have to be committed to memory.
 
ARFlyer said:
I hear the ATP calculation questions are 20x worse. You have to choose your answer, as an example, from 1000NM, 1002NM, 1003NM, and 995NM. :dunno:
Click to expand...

When I took it the answers weren't like that, but the classifications to get the answer was significantly more complex than Private/Commercial Test.
 
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