So I just got my results back yesterday and I'm still kind of in shock — I passed! Background: I'm a crane operator with about 6 years of experience, mostly tower cranes and lattice boom, and I completely bombed my first attempt back in February. Scored a 68 and needed a 70. Embarrassing, honestly, especially since I figured my field experience would carry me through.
What changed the second time was actually sitting down with a proper CCO study guide instead of just assuming I knew the material. I spent about 4 weeks, maybe 90 minutes a night, going through load charts, signal hand signs, and rigging math. The rigging calculations wrecked me the first time — I kept making dumb unit conversion errors under pressure.
The biggest difference was grinding through a CCO practice test every few days and tracking which domains I kept missing. Definitely recommend doing that rather than just rereading the same material. Happy to answer questions if anyone's prepping right now — I remember how stressful this felt.