knowledge test results coming back to haunt you

You failed to perform proper risk management.

You failed to properly asses the benefit of saving a few minutes by
skipping a few questions with the risk that you may have just blown your
chances at a serious aviation career by passing by the skin of your teeth.

Fortunately for you, it turns out that your omission may not actually cost
you an aviation career, but since you didn't know it at the time, it was
undoubtedly bad judgement...


chris priest wrote in
:

Andrew Sarangan wrote:

As for skipping questions because you are confident of passing the
test, this too displays an attitude towards taking shortcuts. It might
be worthwhile for you to read about risk management.

I understand there are things you can risk, and then there are things
you just can't risk. When you are on final approach, you just *can not*
skip those final checklist items. On the flip side, when you are doing
a cross country, you *can* afford to skip writing down your time en
route between checkpoints in your flight log if you are preoccupied
with your VOR receiver failing. I felt like I could afford to skip
certain questions on my test and not have it negatively effect (meaning
fail) the test.

Risk management is all about *managing* risks, not avoiding any sort of
situation imaginable that may in some slight way have a negative
effect. There are tons of things experienced pilots do that could in
some way negatively effect safety of a flight, such as neglecting a
micrology while dealing with an emergency. These are unavoidable and
they happen all the time. The difference between a good pilot and a bad
one is that pilot's ability to deal with these situations, and what
they choose to omit, and not omit.

I didn't go in there and skip every question, as that would have been
poor risk management. I only skipped those questions which I knew would
not effect my ultimate goal which is, and always has been passing. When
I did the SAT, I did not skip any questions because that would have
lowered my score and the goal there is to get the best score you can.
The FAA knowledge tests are not the SAT.

Now on the other hand, if the grade is something that could come back
to haunt me come time to get a job, then I would say what I did was
wrong. That was the whole point of this thread. Will the grade effect
me? If so then I'll try to get a 100 next time. If it doesn't, then I
won't sweat it. Either way I'm going to pass the test and begin my
training aloft where I'll cement the things the things in my mind that
I didn't already know. Isn't that the whole point in doing the oral
part of the checkride?

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 12:24:49 -0400, chris priest
wrote:

snipped
I didn't go in there and skip every question, as that would have been
poor risk management. I only skipped those questions which I knew would
not effect my ultimate goal which is, and always has been passing. When
I did the SAT, I did not skip any questions because that would have
lowered my score and the goal there is to get the best score you can.
The FAA knowledge tests are not the SAT.

Now on the other hand, if the grade is something that could come back to
haunt me come time to get a job, then I would say what I did was wrong.
That was the whole point of this thread. Will the grade effect me? If so
then I'll try to get a 100 next time. If it doesn't, then I won't sweat
it. Either way I'm going to pass the test and begin my training aloft
where I'll cement the things the things in my mind that I didn't already
know. Isn't that the whole point in doing the oral part of the checkride?

The goal of passing of a pretty low goal. Most of the folks I know go
in with a goal of acing the test. Most didn't achieve that, but
that's largely irrelevant. In the flying arena, striving for
perfection is a good thing.

At first I thought this was a serious post, but it's sounding more and
more like a troll (I hope).
Rich Russell

chris priest wrote:
I don't see the written exam tests as the SAT. To me the only point of
taking the test is to pass. The grade is irrelevant. Heck, when I took
my PAR, I remember skipping questions because I just didn't want to do
them. They were mostly those calculating problems that use the E6B which
I knew how to do, I just didn't see the point in laboring over the
problem, when i could have as easily skipped it. I must have did this a
lot, as you all know I came close to not passing. Now, mind you, if I
was in the air, I would have done the calculation without second
thought. It's all about putting the effort where it belongs.

Now we know where the problem lies.
It's you attitude.
You don't understand how skipping one little item can affect the outcome
of your flight.
Have you ever heard the saying, "An accident is a string of broken links
in a chain of events. Stop the breaks at the earliest possile
opportunity and the accident will be prevented."
There are so many scenarios I could present based on what you have
written that I don't know where to begin.

chris priest wrote:

Is it really important to concentrate on a perfect on-center smooth
landing every time, or to just focus on landing each flight safely?

A consistently positive attitude is needed, because there are more
aspects to doing a job well day in and day out than you may suspect. Do
the best you can every time. You can be sure that there will be plenty
of times when that isn't as good as you might like it to be. Sometimes
getting it on the ground safely will be all you can do, and you want the
threshold for those times to be VERY high -- as high as you can make it.

At your stage in life you really don't know enough to decide what is
good enough, whether it's cleaning toilets or flying airplanes, which is
why you are working for someone else. That's normal. The fact that you
have devoted paragraphs here to justifying your lackadaisical attitude
tells me the odds may not be in your favor. Do your best and you will
move forward. Otherwise cleaning toilets may be as far as you ever get.


Jack

Chris,
From your description of your ground work, it shouldn't take all that much
effort to study toward a score in the 90's so that you (and your father)
can come away proud of your score. Instead, it sounds like you are taking
efforts to ensure that you score the lowest score possible without failing,
just so your dad can't be proud of you.

The risk there, of course, is that unless you actually know 100% of the
right answers, you might make a mistake and end up failing after all. Now
THAT is a TOTAL waste of time and money!

As far as landing on the centerline every time - on a 150' wide runway, it
probably is not very critical. But if you were landing on a narrow runway,
it might be more important. And if you let yourself get sloppy on the 150'
wide runway because it didn't matter, you might get into a world of trouble
when you found yourself on a 40' wide runway with other objects along the
sides... If instead you consistently landed on the center line, after a few
hundred landings it might not be so hard anymore, and you'd do it without
much effort every time - so that if you got to a narrow and short runway,
you could focus on the other, more critical novelties...

The same thing even goes for toilet bowl cleaning. While I'm no expert, I
would agree that the first time you cleaned the toilets inside and out with
a dishrag and some spray soap, it might not make much difference. But after
a few weeks, the toilets would no longer look the way they do now - between
destroying the porcelain with soap that is too harsh, and spreading the
germs and bacteria from the inside to the outside. And the cost of
replacing all of the toilets or of losing customers because the toilets are
gross would be much higher than spending a few extra minutes every day
cleaning the toilets correctly...


The cost of getting good grades and studying properly for your flight
training will payoff later - even if you don't realize it. Be mature enough
to recognize that the easy way out is usually not the best...



chris priest wrote in
:

It just seems silly to me to have to spend all of that time studying
just to get a perfect score, when you can spend 80% less time studying
and still pass, giving you the same result. My summer job currently is
basically being a janitor at a RV park. My job is to pick up trash,
clean the bathrooms, sweep the floors; stuff like that. The biggest
thing I dislike about this job is how they instructed me to clean the
bathrooms. I have to spray the toilet bowl with chemical #5, then
chemical #7, then after a few minutes, I have to scrub the inside of
the bowl with brush #1 soaked in bleach. The the outside of the toilet
with brush #2 in bleach. After that I have to wipe it down with a wet
rag, then with a dry rag. Then I have to do it all over again to the
rest of the toilets. After this whole process the toilets have the
exact same appearance they did before I started. It just seems like I
spent all that effort for nothing. I could have achieved the same
effect with a 30 second spray-n-wipe then be done with.

I sort of feel the same when I study for these knowledge tests. I don't
see any reason to go all out when a 70 is all thats required. Thats not
to say only 70% of all there is to know is only worth having.

I don't see the written exam tests as the SAT. To me the only point of
taking the test is to pass. The grade is irrelevant. Heck, when I took
my PAR, I remember skipping questions because I just didn't want to do
them. They were mostly those calculating problems that use the E6B
which I knew how to do, I just didn't see the point in laboring over
the problem, when i could have as easily skipped it. I must have did
this a lot, as you all know I came close to not passing. Now, mind you,
if I was in the air, I would have done the calculation without second
thought. It's all about putting the effort where it belongs.

Looking back, I probably had too much confidence. I'm part 141, and
during ground school I never got below a 85 on all of my tests, so I
have no doubt in my mind that I was going to pass that test. When I
take my instrument knowledge test sometime in the next week, I'll most
likely use a slightly diffrent approach, but I'm still not going in
there with a 100% as my goal. My goal will be to pass.

Is it really important to concentrate on a perfect on-center smooth
landing every time, or to just focus on landing each flight safely?

chris priest wrote:

snip

Looking back, I probably had too much confidence. I'm part 141, and
during ground school I never got below a 85 on all of my tests, so I
have no doubt in my mind that I was going to pass that test. When I take
my instrument knowledge test sometime in the next week, I'll most likely
use a slightly diffrent approach, but I'm still not going in there with
a 100% as my goal. My goal will be to pass.

Is it really important to concentrate on a perfect on-center smooth
landing every time, or to just focus on landing each flight safely?

LOL! You had me going before this post. Hopefully anyone leaning
toward the position you parody will learn something from this
exchange!
--
Alex
Make the obvious change in the return address to reply by email.

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 10:21:04 -0400, chris priest
wrote:

My summer job currently is
basically being a janitor at a RV park. My job is to pick up trash,
clean the bathrooms, sweep the floors; stuff like that. The biggest
thing I dislike about this job is how they instructed me to clean the
bathrooms. I have to spray the toilet bowl with chemical #5, then
chemical #7, then after a few minutes, I have to scrub the inside of the
bowl with brush #1 soaked in bleach. The the outside of the toilet with
brush #2 in bleach. After that I have to wipe it down with a wet rag,
then with a dry rag. Then I have to do it all over again to the rest of
the toilets. After this whole process the toilets have the exact same
appearance they did before I started. It just seems like I spent all
that effort for nothing. I could have achieved the same effect with a 30
second spray-n-wipe then be done with.

Oooohhhh, bad example Chris. The reason you were told to use the
various chemicals, along with bleach and two different brushes and the
wet and dry rags is because you are doing more than just making the
toilets look alike, you are killing germs. Test after test after test
have all come back with the same result, there are germs in public
restrooms and patrons can pick them up there. Your job is to kill
them, not make the toilets look the same.

Even though just barely passing the written still means passing it,
most pilot wannabees want to do better than barely adaquate.

Corky Scott

"Corky Scott" wrote in message The reason you were told to use the
various chemicals, along with bleach and two different brushes and the
wet and dry rags is because you are doing more than just making the
toilets look alike, you are killing germs.

Perhaps the camp director noticed a slacker amongst the workers and directed
that slacker to mix the ammonia with the bleach. Figured he wouldn't be
using those brain cells anyway.

D.

There's a bad smell here, could it be a Troll I wonder?
"chris priest" wrote in
message ...
tony roberts wrote:
I spent a long time contemplating your post.
I even started a very detailed response, and then deleted it, because it
seemed to me that an honest and impartial response was not what you were
truly seeking - so I'll just say this.
I truly believe that the rewards you get out of this will roughly equal
the effort that you put in. Just don't tell the interviewer that you
will not put in xyz because you actually have a life - because, believe
it or not, so does everyone else!
Most employers, particularly in your field seek excellence, but you may
get lucky and find one that is satisfied with mediocrity.
Otherwise - do you have a second career choice?


Tony
P.S. I'm not trying to **** you off - I'm trying to wake you up!


It just seems silly to me to have to spend all of that time studying
just to get a perfect score, when you can spend 80% less time studying
and still pass, giving you the same result. My summer job currently is
basically being a janitor at a RV park. My job is to pick up trash,
clean the bathrooms, sweep the floors; stuff like that. The biggest
thing I dislike about this job is how they instructed me to clean the
bathrooms. I have to spray the toilet bowl with chemical #5, then
chemical #7, then after a few minutes, I have to scrub the inside of the
bowl with brush #1 soaked in bleach. The the outside of the toilet with
brush #2 in bleach. After that I have to wipe it down with a wet rag,
then with a dry rag. Then I have to do it all over again to the rest of
the toilets. After this whole process the toilets have the exact same
appearance they did before I started. It just seems like I spent all
that effort for nothing. I could have achieved the same effect with a 30
second spray-n-wipe then be done with.

I sort of feel the same when I study for these knowledge tests. I don't
see any reason to go all out when a 70 is all thats required. Thats not
to say only 70% of all there is to know is only worth having.

I don't see the written exam tests as the SAT. To me the only point of
taking the test is to pass. The grade is irrelevant. Heck, when I took
my PAR, I remember skipping questions because I just didn't want to do
them. They were mostly those calculating problems that use the E6B which
I knew how to do, I just didn't see the point in laboring over the
problem, when i could have as easily skipped it. I must have did this a
lot, as you all know I came close to not passing. Now, mind you, if I
was in the air, I would have done the calculation without second
thought. It's all about putting the effort where it belongs.

Looking back, I probably had too much confidence. I'm part 141, and
during ground school I never got below a 85 on all of my tests, so I
have no doubt in my mind that I was going to pass that test. When I take
my instrument knowledge test sometime in the next week, I'll most likely
use a slightly diffrent approach, but I'm still not going in there with
a 100% as my goal. My goal will be to pass.

Is it really important to concentrate on a perfect on-center smooth
landing every time, or to just focus on landing each flight safely?

In article , chris priest wrote:
Is it really important to concentrate on a perfect on-center smooth
landing every time, or to just focus on landing each flight safely?

Yes, it is really important to concentrate on that perfect on-centre
smooth landing (even if it's inevitable you won't always get it). If you
are practised at trying to reach perfection, the day the conditions are
difficult you're much more likely to make a safe landing instead of
rolling the plane into a ball.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"