When completing your questions/calculations, sometimes I get a slightly different answer than you indicicate in your Ground School Course/Test Book. Are such slight differences relevant for testing purposes? Usually such differences are minor and the correct answer can be determined as the option that is closest to your own calculations. Sometimes calculations will yield slightly different results depending upon the type of manual/electronic flight computers used and depending upon "rounding off" decisions made, approximations and rules of thumb applied etc. For example, one US gallon of aviation AVGAS fuel actually weighs 6.01 lbs at 15º C, not 6.0 lbs/USG as is commonly used, and if you use the standard 6.0 lbs/USG, there will be a slight difference in your fuel calculations when applying this "rounded off" conversion factor. Be cautious with cheap "Chart Rules" - although these at first appear to be a bargain, often they do not accurately represent VNC/WAC distance scales and this will lead to distance measuring errors, which in turn will lead to Ground Speed, leg time etc. errors. We recommend using only high quality chart rules that have met formal government "weights and measures standards" or alternatively, use the chart scale directly off the aviation chart for greatest accuracy. HINT: to verify the accuracy of your chart rule, obtain a government VNC/WAC chart, then line up your chart rule against the chart scale itself as appears on the reverse side of the VNC/WAC chart (which is ALWAYS the most accurate) and see if your chart rule is identical to the proper chart scale - often the difference can be significant! As well, those using E6B manual flight computers or CR circular type models will often get slightly different answers than those using electronic computers, and even for those using electronic flight computers inputing exactly the same data, slightly different results can be indicated depending upon the make and model of electronic flight computer used. Such minor variations should not pose difficulties for testing purposes: if you complete a calculation in our training materials and your answer is not exactly the same as ours, even though your answer may not be identical, assuming that you have completed the calculation correctly, your result should be close enough to allow you select the intended correct answer when you choose the option that is closest to your calculated answer. This is also true for the actual Transport Canada writtens: you have to select the answer that is closest to your calculations, even though the exact answer you calculated may not appear in the answer options.

Is there any general rule that you can give me for rounding off my calculations where my calculated numbers are slightly different than yours i.e. where my answer is more or less mid-way between your answer options, should I round off up, or should I round off down? In general, after completing a calculation, where your calculated answer is more or less midway between alternate answer options, you should round off your numbers so as to achieve the SAFER result. By way of example, let us say that you have completed a fuel calculation, and, based on the data provided in the question, you obtain an estimated fuel burn of 7.5 gallons. You are satisfied that you have completed the calculation correctly, but the only possible answers provided are 7.0 gallons and 8.0 gallons. In this case, based on the safer option concept, you should choose 8.0 gallons as the correct answer, since this is the safer option.

What is the ideal method to study from your materials, from the exams back to the texts, or from the texts to the exams? We recommend that you first complete our appropriate course text in full, inclusive of all examples and exercises, and when you feel you know the material in the text, then complete the sample exams from the written test book in sequence. Following each exam, cross reference back to the course text as needed so as to improve on any weak areas. Then move on to the other exams. Following this method you will both learn the materials and sharpen your test taking skills.

Do you have French-translations of your Culhane manuals? Yes! We offer several English-French bilingual editions of our texts.

Do you have any plans to provide Spanish-translations of your manuals? Not at this time.

Do you have any plans to make your aviation training texts and exams available for download in electronic format (e. g. Adobe PDF) at reduced prices as compared to your paper format publications? Not at this time.

Do you have any plans to make your aviation training manuals and exams available on CD or DVD or E-Book format? Not at this time.

Can your aviation course manuals and sample exams be used for aviation ground school studies in nations other than Canada? Yes! There are many flying schools and individuals that use our Culhane training manuals in nations other than Canada, as supplemental texts or as primary texts where there may be very little government based or commercially available aviation training publications written specifically for the particular nation. Since our Canadian aviation training manuals offer an ICAO based, comprehensive training package, regardless of the particular nation, there will likely be a significant degree of overlap and our products will be of value for those taking ground studies within many pilot training programs worldwide.

Can your Canadian aviation training books be used directly for purposes of preparing for and passing the USA writtens? No, not directly. The USA has a somewhat different pilot training system than is used in Canada (although there are many similarities). Given the widely available US aviation training books provided by publishers such as Gleim, ASA, and Jeppesen, we would recommend users obtain such USA based material. [We have previously provided USA aviation training manuals for the PPL and CPL which are now out of date but we hope to update and re-issue these in the future.]

I have used your training manuals in the past and they have helped me. I have noticed that after a few months of heavy use as I went through your manuals to prepare for my Transport Canada exams, some pages of my copy eventually started to come out from the binding. Isn't this unacceptable for a training textbook? Based on the paperback binding we use this will unfortunately eventually happen with heavy use of our manuals. Our training manuals serve primarly as course workbooks, designed to have the user actively write into them to complete numerous exercises, questions and examples, with the user typically forcing our manuals to open flat, creasing the binding horizontal etc. while completing our course content, and to some extent, removing chart supplements/answer keys/PTR extracts etc. as the user may prefer. This kind of heavy use, typical for users of our course manuals, can lead to pages eventually falling out, given that our books are only paperback/softcover bound. If we used more expensive hardcover binding, granted, the pages would be less likely to eventually come out, but using hardcover binding would significantly increase our retail prices. Since all of our texts are time sensitive and fall out of date/expire annually, having been written to assist the user primarily to pass a written exam within about one year, and are not intended to last indefinately or for posterity puposes as would be the case for example with fireside novels, atlases or cookbooks etc., we accordingly believe that lower cost paperback binding (admittedly inferior to hardcover binding) is acceptable under the circumstances to the majority of our users.

Top of Page
<< Return to Page 2, FAQ
Proceed to Page 4, FAQ >>