Page 18 - Dear aviator...

- Lastly are the Commercial Pilot’s Licence exams. Plural. Yep. Because
whereas the PPL exam condenses all seven aviation subjects in one test, CPL
standards require you to sit seven separate exams, one for each subject. The
good thing is that the level of study that you put in for the PPL test is the
same for each CPL exam. The amount of knowledge that you have to possess
for the CPL tests is more or less the same as for the PPL, but you are
required to remember and be comfortable with more of it. You can expect
between 1 and 2 hours’ duration for each exam.

- ** It is an undisputed fact that the most difficult exam of all is whichever one
you are studying for right now!

I really don’t feel like giving any suggestions in terms of how to study or what to
study. That is your school’s job. I can, however, tell you how I managed my exams.
At the time I was still very ignorant of exams and CASA requirements… hell, I
didn’t even know what an aviation exam looked like! So I followed my school’s lead
in this.
Some schools suggest that students sit the RPC in-house exam and flight test.
However, you should be aware that after the RPC written exam and flight test you
do not have a licence per se; rather, you have a certificate which is not issued by
the federal authority but by a subsidiary association which in Australia is called
Recreational Aviation Australia (RAAus). This certificate is highly restrictive and
really only suitable for flying leisurely or as the name implies ‘recreationally’
around your base airfield unless you earn several “add-on” features called
‘endorsements’.
The school may then suggest converting the RPC to the CASA RPL licence. This is
done via some paperwork and a flight review. No big deal.
Why all this unneeded complication of RPC and RPL, RAAus and CASA? Your guess
is as good as mine but the gossip is that the registration of aircraft with RAAus
costs less and so this whole exercise is to save the school a couple of bucks.
The natural progression would then be to study and prepare for your PPL exam and
flight test. However, some schools may advise you to skip the PPL exam and flight
test altogether and wait till the beginning of the CPL phase of training to start CPL
exams (which would override the PPL exam and licence), thus avoiding the
aggravation of an additional formal written exam and flight test.
It is obviously up to you to make up your own opinion and decide what to do but
my suggestion would be to decline the offer and insist on sitting the PPL exam.
Why? There are a couple of reasons: mainly so that you can start to become
familiar with the CASA exam format. CASA words their questions in a very sneaky
and convoluted way, so the sooner you start dealing with their language the better.
Secondly, you would have an actual Private Pilot’s Licence as a fallback; the
thought behind this is that if something happens which stops you from finishing
the course - financial issues, school closing down, etc - you would still have an
internationally recognised licence, you would have full pilot privileges, and it would
be relatively easy to transfer over to another school to complete your training. The
alternative is to have an RPC or at best an RPL, both of which are not valid outside
Australia with potentially restricted privileges (such as not being able to fly beyond

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