Question on References and Courses

Kovz · Dec 14, 2015

I would recommend definitely buying all 5 spin-up exams, 4 complex imaginary practice exams, NCEES practice exam, Graffeo practice exam, and maybe CI Code Drillbook. Doing each exam at least twice. Repetitiveness helped me learn the material.

And I can't say enough positive things about Graffeo's book. It was like my bible when studying. I had several pages highlighted and extra notes written in it, but it was my go-to resource out of the 11 references I brought into the exam.

PinoyPE · Dec 14, 2015

fjgreco2,

One thing I highly recommend is the Complex Imaginary NEC Drill book.I never did any code related things in my line of work and was really worried about the NEC part of the exam (about 10 questions if not mistaken) but thanks to this BOARD I found about this CI book and the Tom Henry's Key Index.I was really confident about the NEC as I walked out of the exam.

This is really where I thanked the EB because of the numerous resources and help I picked-up in tackling and passing the PE Exam.

fjgreco2 · Dec 14, 2015

Thanks folks ..... appreciate the help.

lisfs · Dec 16, 2015

taga_ilog said:
fjgreco2,

One thing I highly recommend is the Complex Imaginary NEC Drill book.I never did any code related things in my line of work and was really worried about the NEC part of the exam (about 10 questions if not mistaken) but thanks to this BOARD I found about this CI book and the Tom Henry's Key Index.I was really confident about the NEC as I walked out of the exam.

This is really where I thanked the EB because of the numerous resources and help I picked-up in tackling and passing the PE Exam.

Hi taga_ilog, I wanted to ask you for the best way to use CI NEC Drill Book along with Tom Henry's key index. How do you determine which keyword to look for on Henry's index from the NEC drill question? Many times, I have to spend a lot of time flipping the thick NEC code book before I find can answer a code question. Other times, I cannot even find the answer on my own. This is what frustrated me the most during my CI drill book practice & during the exam. I ended up getting only 5 out of 11 code questions correct.

PinoyPE · Dec 16, 2015

Hi OldenEngineer,

This is how I used the CI Code Drill book and Tom Henry's index which worked for me.If the word I looked up in the index did not lead me to the exact word in the code book,I would look up a different word or meaning from the problem and try that word.At first,it was frustrating because like you said have to flip through different pages but after about answering 50 to 75 questions I became familiar with the code.I know doing the code practice was boring.
The key is to decide which "key word" to find in the index.If it is not then use another word in the question and index that one again.I found that most answers to the questions will be word for word.To speed up my search in the code book,I put tabs (i used and made my own tabs the ones that i can relate to) only on the following:definitions,ampacity table,working spaces groundings and AC resistance table.Put EZ tabs before but I can not relate to it so remove everything and relied only on the keyword index and my homemade tabs.

Gohanto · Dec 19, 2015

Passed this most recent power exam, and Graffeo was definitely my best resource in the exam. I had tabs for everything running on all 3 edges of it. Personally, I think the layout of the book is rough and hard to follow so I didn't use it for studying much for the 1st time around, but in the exam is when I learned how valuable it really was, so I focused much more on that for the 2nd round.

Had 5 other reference books that I barely touched in the exam, but Camara helped for 2-3 questions. I learned a lot of NEC stuff from Mike Holt's Youtube videos (he covers a lot of topics very well for free). The NCEES practice exam and the Complex Imaginary Exams are also good (the latter also has some good YouTube videos that I found helpful). Also watched the PPI Essentials and Advanced videos (not the full review class, videos are much shorter), but I found those very helpful as well and those are where a lot of my hand-written notes in the exam are from. (I paid for the videos once, then had to re-pay to watch the videos again the 2nd time around which I thought was absurd)

Also, learned this the hard way, the NESC code handbook on Amazon does NOT include lookup tables which the exam occasionally asks for info from. The code itself, and not the handbook, is what's needed (if you have a printer at work, you may just google for a free PDF of the standard)