Finished taking the ASTB for the second time yesterday:
Scores were 52-6/9/7
I'm a bit worried about my OAR and AQR scores, but I got a far better pilot score! Definitely an improvement over a 56-5/4/4.
My OAR and AQR scores went down a bit for a couple of reasons. One being I spent a lot of time practicing for the PBM, and not enough time studying for the OAR. I'm hoping to have a good shot with a 3.35 Computer Science GPA package. My package includes no sports, hiking, camping and fishing. I'll let you guys know as soon as I can.
Since everyone is doing a breakdown I'll do one as well:
Study material:
Barron's Military Flight Aptitude Test, 3rd e
TBAS UAV slides
And a few of the older gouges on this forum.
I would suggest practicing as many gouges as possible to increase your OAR score!!
Math
This section was a little more difficult that I expected. I put it down to stress, but practicing word problems is definitely a plus. Make sure you take your time with this section. I accidentally clicked two wrong answers in a row and freaked out because I couldn't go back.
Reading
Not really sure how to help with this one. I mostly skipped over it in practice, other than doing the practice tests. I felt confident in this section. The passages were relatively short, and it would help to know how to eliminate "less right" answers from an answer set.
Mechanical
This is the section I struggled with most of all. I understood the basics of MA, but pivots and torque definitely got me. That's something I would suggest studying up on - the MA needed for pivots, i.e the length that a wrench handle needs to be if you have 80lbs of force on the end, and need to turn 110lbs; as well as the distance from the fulcrum needed, in order to lift 2 persons on the other end of a seesaw individually spaced apart.
Aviation and Nautical Information
100% of my information came from Barron's Military Flight Aptitude Test. There are a few historical questions such as who broke the sound barrier first, etc. I definitely suggest reading up on Naval / Aviation history; Barron's has a section that runs through all of this briefly (and thoroughly enough).
PBM
UAV Section
This section is where I started doing really well. I practiced the TBAS UAV section for like a month straight. The trick I used is to figure out what parking lot is closest to your left, or right and orient yourself around that. i.e. if we're flying in from the North East, North will be on your right, and east will be on your left. The South parking lot will be 2 parking lots on your left. My average time was around 1.5-2.5 seconds. I did miss around 3 or 4 items, though. Don't double guess yourself too much in this section.
Dichotic Listening
The first time I took the ASTB I misread the instructions on how to do this. It's fairly simple once you have the aptitude. Listen in right ear for numbers, and press the corresponding buttons.
Vertical Tracking / 2D Tracking / MultiTasking / Emergency Procedures
I'd like to shout out to Battlefield 4 for allowing me to practice my throttle and joystick handling with video game cheaters from all over the world. In this section, as discussed before, you have to use the throttle and joystick to track a tiny airplane around in a couple dimensions. The big caveat of this section is the multitasking. Eventually you have to track a plane in 1D, track another in 2D and do the dichotic listening section all in one. Just do your best here. The goal is to see how accurate you are with a joystick, and a lot of the times a lot of my tracking was red.
Towards the end of it they switch up the dichotic listening with some emergency procedures, whilst still doing the tracking. Make sure to memorize the the correct knobs you need to turn for the respective procedures!
It helped me to figure out which directions on the knobs were 100% and which were 0%. There is a calibration section at the beginning of the PBM that will help you figure this out.
Good luck!!
Hope to see you all in flight school!!
P.S. message me if you have any questions any about anything! My scores weren't that amazing, but i'm still always willing to help! I'll be hanging around here to prepare for flight school and learn as much as I can before shipping out!
