This is a test of your ability to read and understand two aircraft instrument readings. An artificial horizon and a compass.
From these two readings you will be required to determine the direction and position of an aircraft.
The artificial horizon indicator looks like this:
This shows you two pieces of information. Firstly, whether the aircraft is level, climbing or descending. Secondly, if the aircraft is banking left or right (or is level).
NOTE: The small black arrow shows you the 'top' of the aircraft. So if this arrow is in the bottom half, it means the aircraft is inverted (upside down).
The compass displays the direction of the aircraft. However, the trick here is to understand how that reading relates to you as the 'viewer' of the possible answers. The compass will look like this:
In most cases for this type of test you are always facing NORTH. This means that if the aircraft is facing NORTH, it is travelling away from you. If the aircraft is facing SOUTH it is travelling towards you. If it is facing WEST it is travelling to your left. If it is facing EAST then it is travelling to your right.
So in the case of the compass above, the aircraft would be travelling to your left.
In each question you will be shown both instruments and then four possible aircraft silhouettes. Your task is to select the silhouette which best matches the indications of the instruments.
For example you might see these two instrument readings:
We can see here that the aircraft nose is 'below the horizon' so it is descending slightly. It is also level (not banking left or right). The direction south-east indicates it will be travelling towards us and to the right.
Therefore the silhouette representation of the aircraft would look like this:
Let's look at another example for the following instrument display:
In this case the AH indicator shows the aircraft nose is above the horizon (climbing) and the aircraft is banking to the right. The direction of south - south - east indicates that the aircraft will be facing towards us and slightly to the right.
Therefore the silhouette representation of the aircraft would look like this:
In the aircraft orientation test you will face about 20 questions to be answered within about 6 minutes. This is about 18 seconds per question.
The remainder of this lesson is broken down into 2 stages. Practice and Exams. The practice quizzes are untimed and designed for you to take your time and make sure you learn how to read the instruments. Make sure to stop and read the explanations of each question you have difficulty with.
Once you can do this quickly, move on to the timed exam to test your speed and accuracy.
Becoming familiar with the process of converting the displayed instruments into the appropriate aircraft image will increase your speed and accuracy of this task.