G'day all,

So earlier this morning, I walked out of the PEXO centre smiling yet again as I managed to pass the potentially intimidating CHUF exam with 85%. This has now knocked off 5 of my CPL exams since Oct' 2019,H with only CNAV and CAGK remaining.

In continuation of my tradition of writing a debrief of how my exams went, the below is my take on how the CHUF went for me plus tips and tricks.

1) When I attempted and passed CFPA, I mentioned that it is usually considered the hardest of the 7 exams but given many candidates prepare well for it, they find it ok to deal with providing their concepts are sound. Well, CHUF is usually considered the easiest of the 7 exams BUT, candidates quite often underestimate it and end up with some nasty surprises. In other words, you HAVE TO know the text back to front, possible even more so than what you need to remember for CADA. Bob Tait's text is detailed to a tee, and if you conduct at least 2 full readings of the text and attempt the in-chapter questions at least twice, you should be on solid ground. Again - you must know and understand each and every page of the book well!

2) The exam will consist of 40, 1 mark questions, with the last quarter usually reserved for TEM. I had 12 TEM questions (i.e. q29 through to 40) so it pays to pay close attention to the TEM chapter (Chapter 11 and the final topic in BT's book). Many questions will test your ability to eliminate the obviously incorrect answers so if you're decently knowledgeable on the correct terms relating to TEM (such as the kinds of threats and errors and different kinds of undesired aircraft states etc), you should be able to answer most questions correctly - the same logic applies even to non-TEM questions. If you nail the TEM segment of the exam, you'd have won half your battle as remaining questions are drawn from across the remaining chapters, which brings me to my next point;

3) Some of Human Factors is indeed very interesting, general knowledgy stuff but having said that, DO NOT fall into the trap of being complacent, thinking 'aah this is easy, i'll select the most obvious choice based on my general awareness of things'. This is exactly the kind of attitude that bites ill-prepared candidates. As I've said above, you've gotta learn the book from back to front as there are a lot of technical terms which can possibly catch you off-guard. Pay close attention to chapters covering the anatomy of the ears and eyes along with disorientation. If you can nail these topics along with TEM, I reckon you should pass.

4) Given the amount of technical terms you learn within HUF, this subject might take a little longer than expected to master. Having said that, it is not all that different to Aerody in terms of time and effort and 2 weeks study with full time work should suffice for most, like it did for me. Also, the 75 minute allocated exam time is more than enough. I was done in 40 mins including 10 mins spent on one revision.

Now, onto CNAV in two weeks!

Cheers,
HK