Tinworm-wings: Multiple choice questions with all options wrong!

Thursday 21 August 2008

Multiple choice questions with all options wrong!

(This entry revised following discussions with an examiner, whose opinions I respect. )

I originally protested here about there being a multiple choice question in one exam paper which did not have a correct option to choose; whatever you put would not be correct because air law had changed, while the exam paper had not been updated. The question was worth 5% of the paper in which 70% is a pass. It seemed to me that any student who got 65% would have a very legitimate cause for complaint if he had been unable to get the passmark, whatever he put for that question.

An examiner who read the posting took my point but says that while the CAA is always months behind in approving BMAA draft questions (modified to take into account new laws), and while there is always the potential for students to have difficulties in exams as a result, he has never known a student to fail an exam as a direct consequence of such a conflict. He would go in to bat on behalf of any such student if such an occasion arose.

None the less, the problem exists. Exams do contain questions which are out of date and which require a student to be as aware of past law as they are of current law and will worry over a question for too long and then worry about their other answers. The students' problems are compounded by text books being out of date (even, I am told, some instructors apparently being out of date)...and it just seems to me that as it takes months and even sometimes years for laws to change, it ought to be possible for the CAA to anticipate an exam change and to approve questions which take account of these changes before candidates sit the papers, especially when it ought to be possible for exams to be taken online, avoiding the need to mail-out to all flying schools every time there is a change.

It can't be reasonable to expect students of a subject which is new to them to know law which is not very readily available to them and to take exams where it is impossible to get the answer right, except by pure fluke, especially when a re-take will cost them £25.

I cannot be the only student who has seen this as an issue. Students really must not be expected to carry the can for a system that cannot keep pace with change.

I was asked by one examiner to take account of the fact that raising this point online might panic other students, but is that really my responsibility? If the potential exists for students to be worried by this issue, surely it highlights the need for action to be taken?

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Ground handling (how to store an aeroplane at home and get it to the airfield)

A trial flight in a Thruster, when I was 28, c.1991

I have started to learn to fly before...TWICE! First time round I had just graduated and got a job at an aerodrome in Cornwall, where I earned flying hours by fuelling microlights, giving hourly weather reports to the Met office etc. The weather was bad, so there was little flying to be had...and in the end I was paid with broken propellers and bits of crashed fuselage to hang on the wall. The boss was a great bloke called Ian Stokes, who had been a leading light in forming the BMAA and had manufactured Thrusters in the early days . In retirement he moved to The Gambia and became a publican and, shockingly, was murdered this year.

Flying Rogues

ten years on from my first experiences at Moorland Flying School (and now nearly ten years ago) the flying school was under new management and my girlfriend and I booked full courses. We both made good progress initially but never felt we were being moved on and had difficulty pinning the instructor down to signing our logbooks. When another instructor signed himself as P1, we got suspicious, contacted the CAA and were horrified to learn that our instructor did not have a current instructor rating, that we had not been insured and that none of our hours counted towards our licences. We were eventually refunded and the instructors were prosecuted by the CAA.

The very sympathetic CAA investigator spoke to the BMAA on our behalf and my hours have been allowed to count (at the discretion of the school). But in point of fact, I flew way over the minimum number of hours subsequently, so it is really quite academic in the end.

Around 2001 an instructor in Norfolk tried to convince me that if I bought his aeroplane he could teach me at a cut rate, as I'd then be using my own plane. Great idea, I thought, except that it turned out that the aircraft in question had failed a noise test and could not be used from the instructor's field. He later admitted that I would have to learn on his aeroplane at the normal rate. He resisted showing me the paperwork, kept avoiding me and eventually, when it was quite clear I wasn't going to buy without the paperwork, told me to F-off.

So far my experience has been that there are a lot of rogues in flying, which is one reason why I was so very impressed by the professional set-up at Sywell.

by air to Africa

My sister and I were lucky to fly many thousands of miles in the 1960s and '70s in many aircraft types, including BOAC VC-10s, Boeing 707s and even a Nigerian Airways Dakota, as our dad (and later our mum) had teaching posts in Kenya and Nigeria. Those were still the romantic days of flying, when passengers walked across tarmac and up steps, rather than walking down the tubes that have turned passenger flying into a mundane affair. (Mind you, aren't take-offs still incredibly exciting!?)

Back then air hostesses GAVE children the sorts of nick-nacks that their parents have to pay fortunes for from the airline catalogue these days; things like model aeroplanes, keyrings etc. We were also given sweets to help us cope with depressurisation. (And they were hostesses, so nobody give me a hard time)

Mum says that I cracked my first joke when I was small, on a flight out to Kenya, when I said, "Mummy, shouldn't there be a wing on this side of the plane too". Apparently I got her with that one.

At Kano airport I remember standing behind an engine and thinking how hot it still was....and then being told that the engine was cold. The heat was Kano. I got a headache and took several days to aclimatise.

The airport perri-ways at Kano were littered with aircraft that didn't make it, including a burnt-out Mig 15. The Nigerian Airforce flew them and my dad played squash with one of their pilots, Ben, at the Kano Club. I recall a Mig fly-past on my birthday. Was it arranged with Ben over a beer? Was it a pure coincidence?

At Entebbe airport (Uganda) I remember climbing down the steps on to the runway and being encircled by soldiers with machine guns, who then went through all our belongings and confiscated my cherished Swiss Army penknife, purchased on one of numerous European stop-overs. That was in the twitchy time after the Israeli hijacking ...and mum had to stifle my protests.

Before my first flight to Nairobi, as an infant, I was scared stiff. I didn't understand that I wouldn't have to sit astride the fuselage, as I did on my pedalcar! In a funny way, I not only overcame that fear but have come full circle; microlighting is just like sitting on that pedalcar......open to the elements - real flying!