CPL Navigation study guide
CPL Navigation · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The CPL Navigation examination is one of the theoretical knowledge exams that a candidate must pass on the path to an Australian Commercial Pilot Licence, administered within the flight crew licensing examination system overseen by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. It suits aspiring commercial pilots who have completed the required ground training and are working through the CPL subject set, and it rewards candidates who can apply navigation theory to practical flight-planning scenarios rather than merely recall definitions. Because the official examination specification page could not be retrieved at the time this guide was compiled, the parameters shown here - question count, duration, pass mark, fee and domain weighting - are provisional and must be confirmed against current CASA material before you rely on them. For study purposes, treat the exam as two connected halves: core navigation (charts, position, track and groundspeed, wind, dead reckoning, radio navigation and GNSS) and flight planning with navigation documentation (fuel, endurance, alternates, operational flight plans, AIP and NOTAM material). Topics on this exam: Navigation and Flight planning and navigation documentation. The CPL Navigation study guide has 2 sections and about 731 words.
01Navigation Fundamentals for the CPL Examination
A commercial pilot must move fluently between three ways of describing position and direction: true, magnetic and compass. The chain is true → (apply variation) → magnetic → (apply deviation) → compass , remembered as Variation West, Magnetic Best; Variation East, Magnetic Least . Always work from the known quantity toward the required one, and check the sign with a sketch of the isogonal lines. Understand the triangle of velocities: heading and true airspeed form the heading vector, wind direction and speed the wind vector, and the resultant is track and groundspeed.
377 words, about 2 min02Flight Planning and Navigation Documentation
Flight planning for a CPL is a documentation discipline as much as a calculation exercise. You must know the fuel plan components: taxi fuel, trip fuel, contingency (typically a percentage of trip fuel), alternate fuel, final reserve, and any additional fuel. Be able to state the minimum fuel on board at take-off and explain what happens when the destination forecast deteriorates below the planning minima. Know the operational flight plan, the navigation log, the load sheet and the technical log, and what each legally records.
354 words, about 2 min