Instrument comprehension is the most teachable test in the battery. It looks like a knowledge test and it is not. Once the instrument stops needing a moment of thought, the questions become easy, and the entire difficulty of the test is that moment of thought multiplied by however many questions you face.
What you are looking at
The attitude indicator, also called the artificial horizon, shows the aircraft relative to the ground. Brown or amber is the earth, blue is the sky, and the line between them is the horizon. A small fixed symbol in the middle represents your own aircraft.
The aircraft symbol never moves. The horizon moves around it. This one fact is what people get wrong on first sight, and it explains why the instrument feels backwards.
Reading pitch
Pitch is nose up or nose down, and you read it from where the aircraft symbol sits relative to the horizon line.
- Symbol above the horizon line, so more blue below it: nose up, climbing.
- Symbol below the horizon line, so more brown above it: nose down, descending.
- Symbol on the line with sky and ground evenly split: level.
A useful way to hold it: however much ground you can see, that is how far down you are pointing. If the display is almost entirely brown, you are in a steep dive.
Reading bank
Bank is the wings tilting, and this is where the instrument catches people out. The horizon tilts the opposite way to the aircraft, because the aircraft symbol is fixed and the world is what rotates.
- Horizon tilted down to the right means the aircraft is banked left.
- Horizon tilted down to the left means the aircraft is banked right.
The shortcut that removes the confusion entirely: ignore the horizon line and look at the bank pointer at the top of the instrument. It points at your bank angle directly, against a scale usually marked at 10, 20, 30, 60 and 90 degrees. No mental flipping required.
Putting the two together
A typical question shows you an instrument and asks which of four aircraft pictures matches it, or shows an aircraft and asks which instrument matches. Either way the method is the same, and it is worth doing in a fixed order every time.
- 1
Pitch first
Climbing, descending, or level. This usually eliminates two of the four options immediately.
- 2
Bank second
Left, right, or wings level, read off the bank pointer rather than the horizon.
- 3
Then commit
With pitch and bank settled there is normally one option left. If two remain, one of them differs in steepness, and that is the only thing left to compare.
Doing it in that order matters. Candidates who look at the whole picture at once and try to match it as a shape are slower and get caught by options that are close but mirrored.
The compass
The second part of instrument comprehension adds heading. The heading indicator reads like a compass card seen from above, with the number at the top being the direction you are pointing. North is 360, east is 090, south is 180, west is 270.
The common error is reading the number nearest the bottom of the instrument, which gives you the reciprocal, exactly 180 degrees out. Test writers include the reciprocal as an option every time.
How to practise it
Short sessions, repeated. This is a recognition skill, and recognition is built by seeing many instruments quickly rather than by studying a few carefully. Twenty minutes across four days will do more than two hours in one sitting.
You will know you are ready when you stop translating. At the start you will think, the horizon is tilted down to the right, therefore left bank. Eventually you will simply see left bank. That is the whole goal.