What the test is
The formatA 2D overhead radar picture with three aircraft: CA-A (red) and CA-N (yellow) flying ordered gate sequences (lettered waypoints for one, numbered for the other) plus a green interceptor chasing a moving enemy. All three continue on whatever heading you last assigned. Aircraft must keep at least 3,000 ft of vertical separation from each other and 1,000 ft clear of danger-area altitudes, shown as red circles: white outline for 2,000 ft, black outline for 3,000 ft. Interception works off the projected crossing point, not the enemy’s current position.
Format description from the published CBAT TMI test guides
(rafcbat.wordpress.com) and the Air Defence Academy test guides
(airdefenceacademy.com/testguides).
Skill area: Spatial reasoning.
What candidates say
These points come from people who have sat the test, gathered from forums, community chats and candidates who wrote to us afterwards. Nothing here is quoted or attributed. Each point is graded by how many separate accounts back it up.
✓ Well established! Single account✕ Outdated? From the published guides
The number you type is the compass heading you want the aircraft to END UP flying. It is an absolute bearing, measured against the same fixed north for every aircraft on the screen. It is not the size of the turn, and it is not a point on the edge ring.
This is the most useful single thing on this page, so it is worth being blunt about the two ways people get it wrong. First, it is NOT relative to the heading the aircraft is already on: typing 090 does not swing it 90° from wherever it happens to be pointing, it puts it on an easterly heading. Second, it is NOT an instruction to fly at the 090 mark painted round the edge: a heading is a direction and that mark is a place, so the two only line up when the aircraft is sitting on the centre point. The L/R you pick is the only part of the input that is relative to anything, and it chooses which way round the aircraft rotates to reach the heading you asked for, not how far it goes. You will see this written on forums as each aircraft having “its own north”. That means the same thing, a north line drawn through the aircraft parallel to the display’s north, but the phrase misleads people into thinking the frame turns with the aircraft. It does not. North is north everywhere on the display. The numbers round the edge are a scale reference, handy for judging how big a 100° turn looks, and otherwise a distraction.
Flying west on 270, you select L and type 090. The aircraft turns left through south and settles heading due east on 090, a full 180° turn. It does not end up heading south.
This is the case that catches everybody, because 090 looks like it ought to mean “90 degrees”. Nothing about the input is measured against the heading you are already on, so a big number can produce a small turn and a small number a big one. If what you actually wanted was 90° of left turn from 270, the heading that lands on is 180, so 180 is what you type. Work out the heading you want first, then type that. Never type the size of the turn.
Everyone rates this the hardest and worst explained test on the CBAT. The instructions don’t make the controls clear.
Knowing that beforehand is worth something on its own. People who walked in expecting confusion handled it far better than the ones who assumed being confused meant they’d missed something obvious.
You can score well on DPT, and pass overall, while feeling like you completely botched it. The markers clearly don’t expect anyone to nail this one.
One candidate got reset to the gate again and again, missed an intercept entirely, felt awful about the whole thing, and still scored well on that exact test. Another seriously thought about walking out at the halfway point and passed for both roles he wanted. Whatever happens here, finish the day.
It builds. You start directing one aircraft through lettered gates, then juggle up to three at once, then there’s an intercept where you bring a marker onto a jet that’s manoeuvring.
Aircraft also have to keep vertical separation from each other and stay clear of marked danger areas. The early phase is where you can afford to get things wrong.
Hitting “clear” to fix a mistyped input also wipes the direction you’d selected. Re-enter it, or the aircraft will swing round the long way.
One person reported this and said it threw him more than anything else on the test. Costs you nothing to check during your practice run and could save the whole exercise.
The danger areas are fixed. They don’t drift and they don’t disappear, so you can take them off your plate in the opening seconds by putting both aircraft at an altitude that clears them and leaving them there.
One of the most useful things anyone has said about this test. It converts a running hazard into a one-off decision, and everything you save goes into the gates and the intercept. The one thing it doesn’t cover is the AI traffic crossing the scene, which can be sitting at whatever altitude you just picked, so you still watch for other aircraft, you just stop watching the ground.
Turning an aircraft the long way round is sometimes the right call. The extra seconds in the turn are seconds you can spend reading the rest of the screen.
Worth knowing because the instinct is always to take the short turn. When you’re behind on the picture, the slow turn is free thinking time rather than a mistake.
The practice attempt matters more here than anywhere else. Use it to answer one specific question, namely what exactly your input does to the aircraft, rather than treating it as a warm-up.
This is the test where walking in with an untested assumption about the controls costs the most, and the practice run is the only place you can settle it for free.
Practise it on SkyWatch
Our DPT game puts you on the radar picture with aircraft to steer through their gates and an interceptor to guide. Easier and Hard boards let you build up to the full load.
The tutorial is a set of short drills on headings and heights, the part candidates most often find confusing on the day.
400+
practice runs played
on SkyWatch
on SkyWatch
Every SkyWatch game is our own CBAT-style practice version, built from what candidates report. None of them is the real test.
Related tests
- Instrument Comprehension Test (INSC)instruments 1 and 2
- Directions and Distances (DAD)the ship leaves the harbour questions
- Spatial Integration Test (SIT)the grid layout and short clip test
- Trace Test 1 & Trace Test 2 (TRAC1 / TRAC2)trace 1 and trace 2
- Visualisation Testsspatial awareness
- Angles, Bearings & Degrees Test (ABD)angles and compass bearings
Read more
This page is one part of the complete CBAT guide, which also covers how the day runs, the pass marks and the domain minimums. Or see every CBAT test on one page.