Instrument Knowledge Test

Yesterday I sat my IRA knowledge test at Illinois Aviation Academy at KDPA, my home airport. The number of questions was sixty, and the time limit was 180 minutes. My approach to preparing for this examination consisted of several solid months of study. I leveraged the test-question item bank provided by Dauntless Aviation, as I find the explanations provided for the questions to be phenomenal. I reviewed the questions from the item bank, approximately 1,200 of them, for a period of about six months preceding the actual examination. Overkill, I know, but at least this made me feel much more comfortable on the day of the examination.

Additionally, I leveraged a lot of the preparatory materials provided by the FAA, such as the Instrument Procedures Handbook, the Instrument Flying Handbook, and the Advisory Circular concerning weather. A great deal of training for the IRA is flight planning, and understanding all the different weather symbols and terminology on prognostic charts. I find these particular topic areas interesting and tend to spend more time studying and analyzing the charts. In fact, my next post will detail a cross country trip in the new Cirrus SR-20 that I’m almost checked out in. Stay tuned!