I have been lurking through the forums for a little while now but have yet to post. However, I took the ASTB a few days ago and thought I would try and post what I remember about it. I only had 2 weeks to study before my OSO had me take it and I scored a 5/6/6 54. I am not happy with my scores at all but my OSO told me that "If it qualifies then it qualifies" and told me not to try and re-take it. Anyways, here's a short breakdown of my experience.
Math Section
This section was not as hard as I imagined it would be but I obviously didn't do to hot either. Most of the questions I got were just algebra and geometry. There were some probability problems thrown in but no Logarithms or anything like that. The math isn't hard, just know how to set up the problems(most study guides will have examples that match almost exactly with the test questions). Not sure how I scored what I did, but I think if you study the study guides/practice tests on here than you will do fine.
Reading:
I thought this section would be one of the easier ones but I was somewhat wrong. The reading is dry and the answers are pretty tricky. Most the problems were easy to narrow the answers down to 2, but then those 2 would both seem correct and I would have a hard time choosing one. I don't remember it being overly difficult though.
Mechanical:
I knew this section was going to be a little harder for me, but it wasn't terrible. There were a lot of pulley and lever questions. I only had 1 or 2 circuit questions. I had a few velocity questions and a few about gears. This section ended up being a lot more simple than I thought it would be.
UAV:
I had looked at a few practice problems on the forum and understood how to do the problems before I went in. Before the section starts you get 8 practice problems. I have never been a great test taker and I was starting to get stressed out when I missed a couple at the beginning. It's really not hard and should be easy points, just review it a lot before the test so you don't get anxious like I did. I missed a lot more than I should have, but I also should have practiced more before I took it.
Avionics/Nautical:
I didn't get to do a ton of studying for this section but I still think I did okay on it. There were a few questions about how to tell what direction a plane is going based on the lights you see. There were questions about the numbers and lights on a runway and what they mean. Most the questions though were about parts of an airplane and what controls different movements. This was definitely one of the easiest sections.
Performance Based Measures Battery:
This part of the test was definitely the hardest for me. I had heard horror stories on here and for the most part they were true. I didn't think the number sequence part of it was super difficult but tracking the two planes was almost impossible. The controls are not very sensitive at all and therefor it's extremely difficult to track, and most the time I ended up chasing, over correcting, chasing, and over correcting again. It's really easy to get stressed out on it so my advice is just to relax the best you can go with it. I don't think anyone could be "good" at this or even "pass" so you're going to feel like you're doing a lot worse than you're really doing.
All in all, the test was long and some sections were pretty tough, but it's definitely doable if you put some effort into studying. I only had 2 weeks and didn't get to study as much as I would of liked and still passed. Wouldn't of been able to do it without all the info on this website though so thank you to everyone who contributed. Study the guides and you will do fine, good luck to anyone taking it.
