Last week (early December 2021) I sat for the FAA Unmanned Aircraft General — Small (UAG) test, AKA the Drone Pilot Test. I passed with a 95% after about 18 hours of study time, and I wanted to share my experience and how I prepared.

I decided to pursue my Part 107 Certification because as I go about my job as Business Development Representative at WithersRavenel I get to visit a lot of the great construction projects we work on and having the ability to view the projects from the air will 1) give me a great perspective on the overall scope of the project and 2) provide me with great photographic and video assets to share with our clients! As I will be flying a drone for work, having the proper certifications is crucial, and I am fortunate to have my company’s support in this effort.

Location and Setup

Did you know there was office space at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU)? Neither did I. Next to the private flight terminal at RDU is a Two-Story Class-C office Building. The FlightGest Academy testing center — a certified PSI testing facility — is found on the second floor. After entering the office suite and talking to the test proctor, I returned my personal items including my watch and all electronics to the car. The only thing I brought into the facility was my driver’s license and my car keys. The proctor asked me several times if the address on my license was my current address, so that seems like it was important to the FAA.

Check-in was easy. The testing center was nothing to write home about, but that doesn’t really matter. After check-in we (there was two other test takers) we walked to the testing room, a small room with three computer terminals. I got a copy of the testing supplement, a dry erase sheet, a dry erase marker, two pencils, two sheets of paper, a ruler, and a calculator. The testing desk also had a pair of foam earplugs. One thing I didn’t think through when signing up to take the test at the airport — I was just thinking it would be cool to get a “pilot” license at the airport — was that the airport was going to be noisy. Hence, the earplugs. In hindsight the noise wasn’t too bad.

The computer test program was easy to navigate. Within the testing program you can bookmark questions, which is nice. More on that later. The testing program also has a built-in calculator, which came in handy because the calculator the proctor gave me wound up not working.

Process

The process was straight forward. Throughout the test, I wound up bookmarking 12 questions to come back to which is 20% of the test. At the end, if I had a 50/50 shot of getting the bookmarked questions wrong then I was going to get at 90% or better. I say 50/50 because the questions only have 3 multiple choice options, and it was usually pretty easy to narrow down the options from 3 possibilities to 2. For almost every question there was an option that seemed pretty likely to be wrong.

At the end of my first pass, I felt good, but I bookmarked more than I expected given the amount of time I spend preparing. After the first pass I went back and re-read all the questions for any potential hints that might help my answer my 12 bookmarked questions and then went through and double checked my bookmarked answers. After the second and third passes I only changed two answers and left the other 10 with my original selections.

Question Breakdown

The breakdown of the questions was interesting and not what I expected it to be. When I finished the test, I tallied the questions into several buckets including: Safety and Operations, Airspace and Altitude, Weather, Radio Frequencies, Airport Information, Remote ID and Flying Over People, FAA-107 Regulations, and Aerodynamics.

The largest category was “safety and operations” category with 23 questions. 38% of the test. Basically, this section represents how not to be an idiot when flying your drone as a remote Pilot in Command.

Questions include maintenance questions, “who’s responsible for this” type questions, how to make sure you have a good attitude. All of the questions were pretty straight forward and well represented in the practice tests.

The second most popular bucket, with 14 questions, was altitude and airspace questions.

This was the section I had the hardest time with on the practice tests, so I spent a lot of time prepping. On test day I felt surprisingly good about my answers to these questions. There was one that got me a little confused.

For one question, the sectional chart in the supplemental showed the height of a tower with only the MSL (Mean Seal Level) altitude, I wasn’t used to seeing it way. Usually, the chart shows MSL on the top and then AGL (Above Ground Level) on the bottom. So that threw me for a little bit a little bit. The question asked, “If you fly 50 feet above the tower, what airspace will you be in?” Basically, are you going to be in airspace where you need permission to be, and the answer was yes. The height of the tower was well into the regulated airspace.

There was one airspace question that completely stumped me. The question asked about an airport in Class D airspace that had a tower that didn’t operate full time. When the tower isn’t in operation they wanted to know if the airspace would revert from Class D to E/G or stays the same? I don’t know. I don’t remember hearing or reading anything about airspace changing over time, so I just said, “stays the same”. I hope that was correct.

The key to getting the airspace questions right is memorizing the different elevations where E and G airspace transitions happen, knowing how to read tower elevations and airspace shelf elevations for Class C and Class B Airspace, and knowing where to find the legend in the front of the supplement. Also know how to find where on the supplement the question is referring, usually an area number in a red circle, which will save you a bunch of time in finding airports and towers.

The weather section, with six questions, was also pretty straight forward. All of that information was on the YouTube study guides and printed material.

I did not feel super confident in my airport/air traffic frequency questions. On the practice tests they usually just asked what the frequency was for given airport, which is easy to look up. On the actual test the questions were more geared to definitions of what you could expect to hear on various channels. I did not have those definitions memorized, so I was a bit lost. There were five frequency questions.

There was one question that I put in the “Airport Reference” bucket. They asked where you would look for certain other information about an airport. I guessed the aeronautical chart supplement.

Four questions were about the Remote ID and flying over people. New material for 2021. Nothing too crazy if you know about the Category 1–4 definitions.

Three of the questions were about the FAA 107 Regulations. These were also definition-based questions which are not my strong suit. On one of the questions, I simply had no clue what they were saying. They were asking if the FAA Part 107 covered recreational drone activity (which I knew was wrong), but then other two options were civil drone activity or civil/public drone activity. I did not know what public drone activity means, but I figured civil was just non-military. I decided on “civil only”, but who the heck knows.

The four questions on center of gravity and weight were a bit tricky, but I tried to “logic” my way through those. They ask questions like “if you have a plane and the set the center of gravity rear of aftermost recommended center of gravity point, what is the result?” Usually, one of two of the answer did not make sense, so I could narrow down my choices.

Test Prep

The day of the test, right before driving to the test facility, I spent about an hour “cramming” material. I had printed out a couple of the cheat sheets and had made a note sheet for myself, which was not large. My reference note page was a half sheet of paper with four or five things mostly about airspace on there. I spent about 45 minutes on those materials.

One study tactic that I wish I handled differently would be to start taking my own notes from the beginning. Any time a topic was discussed that wasn’t clear, or I got a practice question wrong, I should have made a note about it. That way, I would have known where to focus most of my study time and could have been more efficient and focused on my study efforts.

I also leafed through the FAA study material just kind of quickly went through them and spent 15 minutes looking through front to back just to see any stuff that I may have underlined previously. For about an hour of pre-test cramming total.

On test day, I also rewatched the Altitude University — FAA 107 Study Guide. I watch on 2x speed, so it goes pretty quickly. I wanted to make sure I heard and saw all of the material one last time and nothing fell through the cracks. A link the videos and other resources I used will be at the end of this post. I also did some quick YouTube searching for shorter video answers on airspace and some of the other items I found challenging. Overall, I spent about 3 hours studying the morning of the test.

How I Studied

To study I used a combination of free resources, both video and print. I also tested myself with a few online question banks. The first step to studying was signing up for the test. For me without a date set in stone I knew I would have a tough time getting motivated. I scheduled my test about 30-days out. Then I scheduled study time blocks onto my calendar. I had about 20 hours of time blocked out to prepare across 10 study blocks. The blocks ranged from 1–3 hours. Time blocking was important to me because I live by my calendar and if it’s not on the calendar it likely won’t get done. Also, because it was on the calendar and I had committed to not only taking the test but passing, and my pride and my company’s money was on the line, this time blocking made sure that I would protect this study time. I was committed.

With my time blocks set I went about gathering materials. I found the FAA Part 107 Study Guide online and printed it. I also found a few long form YouTube Study Courses and practice tests online.

My first study sessions focused on watching the YouTube study guides. I watched several end-to-end and just tried to absorb the material. My first pass through I watched the videos at 1x speed. Next, I read the FAA Study guide and underlined things I thought were tricky or that I found surprising. For example, I was blown away by the fact that humid air is actually less dense than dry air. \

After reading the FAA Guide over several sessions I thought it was time to see how prepared I was and sat for a practice test. I spent the next few sessions taking all of the practice tests that I could find. Because I blocked out a month to study, sometimes the practice tests were days apart. I was amazed how much information would “drop” out of my brain between sessions.

Since I am taking the test in 2021 there is some new material that was added to the test this year in April, so I watched a few updated test prep videos. As the test day approached I rewatched the YouTube study guides at 2x speed and kept taking practice tests. In the last week I made some special notes on weather, flight patterns, and airspace because that is where I had the most trouble.

By the day of the test, I had probably studied and taken tests for 18 hours. Even though I had blocked out the time, I wasn’t able to study for the full 20 hours I had committed to. Life happens.

Study Tips

If I had to do it all again, the only thing I would change would be to watch the YouTube study guide with notepad in hand. After one pass through the guide, I would jump straight into a practice test. The test wouldn’t go well, but it would give a good indication of where my “weak spots” were. Now that I know my weak spots, I would continue with the study material and process above but keep a running “cheat sheet” of personal notes to refer back to and keep track of the information that is hardest to retain.

I was happy with my results but probably could have gotten by with fewer hours of studying. I think 10–15 hours of concentrated studying is more than enough.

I am happy with my results, but obtaining the certification is only one of the first steps to being a safe and effective drone pilot. Next, I will spend some time training with the expert pilots in the WithersRavenel Remote Sensing Group. They will teach me how to operate the smaller drones in our fleet, in a safe and controlled manor. I am fortunate to have a team of experts by my side as I start getting stick time! I can’t wait to start sharing our amazing projects with clients and colleagues.

So, what about you? Are you studying for the FAA Part 107 Certification? How are you preparing? What do you hope to do once you are certified? Let me know via email at [email protected] or on Twitter!

Resources

YouTube

Tony & Chelsea Northrup — FAA 107 Course

Altitude University — FAA 107 Study Guide

Katia’s Buzz TV — FAA 107 Study Guide

Philosophy of Data Science — FAA 107 2021 Updates

Tim McKay — FAA Part 107 Update Flying at Night and Over People

RemotePilot101 — Understanding Airspace

PDF

Official FAA Study Guide

FAA Drone Pilot Test Supplement

Practice Tests

The Drone Coach Online Practice Test

The King School Online Practice Test

FAA Practice Test PDF

Cram Sheets

Altitude University Cram Sheet