So I decided to go and sit for my 1 AE. I am under the system in that I took a 3 AE/2AE exam about 5 years ago. Now it is time to sit for 1AE and Cheng. Are the questions from the same bank? Is there an emphasis on any certain areas? Pretty much study the same books and disc from my 3AE/2AE exam? I used the Mass Maritime books and MEBA cd. Thanks for any help
Yes. Study the exact same book and questions from seasource that you used for your 3rds and you will pass easily
The only thing that took me by surprise when I sat for my 1st license was the electrical module. They asked a bunch of questions that weren’t on either the 2nds or 3rds electrical mods, albeit they WERE in the study guides. All the rest were same same as stated above.
It was the mid '80s when I set for 1st and Chief. My 2nd exam had 5 times the juice questions that I had on 1st and Chief. The 1st and Chief had “review” modules that were very broad in subject but the juice math was a little more advanced.
I had a few juice calculations, but it wasnt too bad. However juice was the hardest module. I took 5 modules for 1st motor in one day and did not ace them, but did pass them with some room to spare. Seems like more hydraulics and reefers on this test than on previous.
I took the 1A/E Motors exams about 3 weeks ago.
I was surprised at how much flash type watermaker and aux. boiler questions were on it.
I was surprised at how much flash type watermaker and aux. boiler questions were on it.
How many big motor ships have you sailed on? Granted the CG needs to catch up and realize that we don’t use flash type evaps any longer (for the most part), but you spend half your time monkeying with the boiler. Lose the boiler the engine doesn’t run…go figure.
I just took the 1st/Chiefs test last winter and that was after taking the 3AE AND the 2AE tests separately (due to the weird conversion to the 3rd/2nd exam which I misses by a month…) and I found that the first electrical test I ever took was by far the hardest with the most math and the chiefs was by far the easiest with a lot of identify the thing in the picture questions. Having said that, the safety test for chief was really hard with tons of obscure CFR lookups that left me puzzled as I normally blow through them. After taking 18 exams (1 failure per round and no steam) I believe that the best way to study is to totally ignore the math and highly specific questions and just go through questions and answers and when you do this don’t test yourself just look at the question and the CORRECT answer. With tens of thousands of questions to go over there is absolutely no reason to clutter your head up with 3 wrong answers to every correct one. I have found that this trick helps me grab those extra couple answers to very simple questions that you may have missed just because you haven’t seen them in awhile or because that style steam trap hasn’t been used since the war but still shows up on an exam.
Spend 4 hours learning the math for 2 questions in the whole bank or relearn dozens of gimmies in the same amount of time.