ADX Software Review!

coloradopowpow

Well-Known Member
There may be people in my situation where changing careers isn’t so quick and you have months, maybe a year or longer to make the transition. That was my case, and I wanted to lighten my course load by getting the ADX out of the way as early as possible, by studying on my own.

I was hard pressed to find any reviews of the various software and products available to self-study for the ADX so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the 3 I used.

TL;DR: Sheppard Air takes the cake by a longshot. Gleim and Sheffield don’t even come close, read on to know why!


I originally purchased Sheffield’s $50 ADX app to study, and to be honest, it was good to have on your phone while you wait in line, walk your dog or are just laying in bed. I got through mostly all of their 1,491 questions within a couple months but became frustrated.

Sheffield’s app servers randomly crashed for a couple weeks, and when you’re trying to learn 20+ new questions/day, it is a huge inconvenience. To their credit, they offered a full refund no questions asked, during the outage (I didn't take it at the time, but a couple weeks after, and was refused).
During this time, I was also beginning to heavily use supplements that accompany some ADX questions (charts, approach plates, infographics etc.), and Sheffield will have the chart available for you to see, but will occupy the entire screen with the supplements, and the images takes several seconds to load, which really adds up when you're trying to bang out hundreds of questions in reviews.
You should be concerned that you're 'over studying' obsolete answers, as it appears that Sheffield does not update their question/answer bank. They don't encourage their students to provide feedback for the app as most of their students attend their courses anyways.
I am heavily critical of Sheffield because as a educational tool, I feel like it needs to be held to a high standard, which it fails to do. For example, many of the questions on the app are simply outdated or incorrect, as I can personally attest to.

Example: During the ADX, I saw the question for Squall Lines which the correct answer for is 15-20knots of wind, and the incorrect answers are 25-40, and 16-22. Sheffield teaches you the correct answer as 16-22. I assume at one time this was the correct answer at one point, but is no longer, and the material is extremely outdated.
There are a couple supplements that don't even load making the question invalid, and some questions/answers that simply don't make sense. If anyone else can attest to this I'd appreciate it, but it's an overpriced, incorrect, shoddy learning tool.

Gleim I spent the least amount of time with, there's some neat features that shows your average score across units, the supplements/images load relatively quickly but open in a new browser tab so it's hard to do side-by-side work. They have good customer support, though their question bank is in the same range as Sheffield's (1,400ish). I saw quite a few questions regarding the weight balance and dimension calculation of Pallets, for example, which Sheppard never taught, and I never saw on the ADX. So I am unsure if they are also 'over-teaching' the material but it seemed like it.

As for Sheppard, it kind of put me off that you can use it on one device only, though I bit the bullet and registered on my desktop (fearing I'd get distracted too easily). It worked out very well, as the supplements/images load INSTANTLY when you need to examine reference material or figures, you can mark your incorrect/unsure questions and review them later, and they have a sheet to help you memorize more questions in a faster manner.
Though Sheppard really shines by the fact that they are always encouraging you to report what you remember from taking the actual test to help future students. They have a 24/7 help line if you get stuck on any material (which I used a few times, even email responses were very quick). You can search individual questions by keyword alone, which is pretty awesome (ex. questions pertaining to Thunderstorms).
They even provide an update log for the latest version and have revisions to sometimes a few questions that have changed due to the FAA.

Overall, if you have time before class, take the ADX, and make sure you do your research about which software to use. If you have any questions about any software or tips on how to study, feel free to ask or shoot me a DM. Good luck to all future test-takers!
 
To be honest, if you're studying on your phone, I would recommend the Dauntless app over Sheffield. It's more expensive, has more questions, but has good solid answers, and the 'study buckets' feature is actually extremely useful for making sure you're understanding all the material, not just part of it. I wouldn't recommend it as your only study tool though unless you already have a good bit of aviation knowledge, as it's designed to teach you how to get the right answer, not to memorize like Sheppard, and to do that for 1787 questions is extremely time-consuming. I passed using just Dauntless, but it's certainly not for everyone. Sheppard is the default and don't let the one device, desktop-only (except iPads), janky-looking nature of it deter you, it really will work.

And yes, Gleim is just garbage. They have neat features but their concept of studying before you even know the questions you're studying for is just not how the human brain works, you can't properly prioritize what to look for. If they had a study step where they showed you the questions along with the correct answers, I think it would actually be the best option... but as it is, I don't recommend Gleim for anyone. Sometimes, the difference between valuable and useless really is that small. I bought it and I simply couldn't get through even half the material before I gave up and looked elsewhere. Maybe you could use it to feel comfortable that your software of choice isn't missing any questions, but... honestly, just tell that voice in your head to shut up and buy Sheppard, you'll be fine.
 
"How do I pass the ADX?"

"Just buy Sheppard Air lmao."
1666916077890.png
 
Back
Top