Test strategy

How to Pass the Part 107 Test: A Study Plan

✓ Reviewed against current FAA sources on October 12, 2026

Most people who fail the Part 107 knowledge test did not study too little. They studied the wrong proportions. They gave a week to weather, which is worth about three questions, and a single evening to the regulations, which are worth about twenty-nine. This guide sets out a study plan built from the weighting the test actually uses, so your hours land where the points are.

What the test actually is

The Unmanned Aircraft General test, which the FAA abbreviates UAG, is the knowledge test for the remote pilot certificate. The shape of it matters for planning:

• 60 scored questions, plus 5 unscored validation questions, so expect 65 items on the screen. PSI's UAG information bulletin, effective 29 September 2025, gives the number: the five validation questions do not count for or against your score, the published question count excludes them, and the 120 minutes allotted includes answering them. Pace yourself against 65 items rather than 60.
• Three answer options per question, not four. This matters more than it sounds: eliminating one option turns a one-in-three guess into a coin flip.
• Two hours, which is a generous allowance for 60 items.
• 70 percent to pass, which is 42 of 60 correct. You can miss 18. Section 107.67 (opens in a new tab)(c) does not actually set that number, it leaves the passing grade to the Administrator, so treat 70 percent as current policy rather than as a figure fixed in the regulation.
• Taken at an FAA-approved knowledge testing center, scheduled through PSI, for a fee the center charges rather than the FAA.

Where the points are, and where they are not

This is the single most useful thing on this page. The weighting table printed in the Airman Certification Standards, FAA-S-ACS-10B, is obsolete. The FAA declared it obsolete in its August 2025 Airman Testing Community Advisory and directed applicants to the PSI applicant information bulletin instead, which took effect on September 29, 2025 and stands until the ACS itself is updated. The topics did not change. The distribution changed a great deal.

Nearly half the test is the text of 14 CFR Part 107 and the parts it reaches, which include Part 48 for registration and Part 89 for Remote ID. Study guides that still divide effort evenly, or that still print the superseded ACS percentages, will send you to spend half your preparation on a quarter of the paper. Our guide to the current test blueprint breaks the numbers down area by area.

One caution against over-correcting: do not abandon the small areas. Weather and loading together are worth about four questions, and four questions is roughly a quarter of the margin the passing score gives you.

How long it takes

Plan on two to four weeks of steady work, somewhere between 15 and 25 hours in total, if you are new to aviation. Let your practice scores move that estimate rather than the calendar. Part 61 certificate holders already know a good deal of the airspace and weather material, but Part 107 has its own rules with their own numbers, and the familiar ones are a trap: the operating limits, the recency scheme and the waiver provisions are specific to this rule part.

A four week plan that follows the weighting

Run a ten minute drill on thresholds and numbers every day from the first week to the last. The test is full of them: altitudes, distances, visibilities, weights, time limits. They decay fast and they are cheap to maintain.

How to use practice exams so they teach you something

• Read every rationale, including on questions you got right. A lucky guess on a three option question is a coin flip you will lose next time.
• Keep an error log that records the reason, not the question. "Confused Class D with Class E surface area" is actionable. "Missed question 14" is not.
• Track misses by knowledge area as well as by total score. Two misses in one area is a signal to reread that area, even if your overall score looks fine.
• Use the review questions right after reading, then again a week later. Spacing is what makes recall stick.
• Save two full exams for the end and take each in one closed book sitting, timed, no notes.
• Be ready when you clear 70 percent comfortably in every area, not when your overall average crosses the line. An overall pass can hide an area you would fail on a bad day.

Chart questions, and what changed on October 26, 2026

Airspace questions usually hand you a sectional chart excerpt and ask you to read it. Those excerpts have traditionally come from the printed testing supplement, FAA-CT-8080-2H, which the testing center provides. You do not bring your own.

As of October 26, 2026, the UAG test also includes image based questions where the image is embedded in the question itself and is not in the supplement at all, drawn from current sectional charts. The FAA has also said these images cannot be previewed, because once an image is embedded in a question it becomes part of that question.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: memorizing the supplement plates is no longer sufficient, and it was never the skill being tested. You need to read a sectional excerpt you have never seen before. Our sectional chart guide gives a repeatable routine for doing that under time pressure.

On the supplement itself, the FAA has said only that a date for removing supplements from test centers has not been set and that the public will get ample notice. That describes a withdrawal that is coming but unscheduled, so confirm the position close to your test date rather than assuming either way. We track these in what is changing on the FAA knowledge tests.

Test day

• Identification. Section 107.67 (opens in a new tab)(b) requires identification carrying your photograph, your signature, your date of birth and your permanent mailing address. If your permanent mailing address is a post office box, you must also provide a current residential address. Check the name matches your IACRA registration.
• Arrive early and check the current applicant information bulletin for what you may bring. A memory erasable arithmetic calculator, plotters and scales are generally permitted; your own writing implement generally is not.
• Answer every question. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so an unanswered question is a thrown away one.
• Work in two passes. Flag anything that stalls you, move on and come back. The time allowance rewards this.
• Read each stem twice. Find the qualifier before you look at the options: maximum, minimum, except, unless. Then answer it in your head before reading the choices.

The distractor patterns worth recognizing

FAA questions are built, not improvised, and the wrong answers are engineered. A handful of patterns recur often enough to be worth naming:

• the unit inversion, such as statute miles where the rule says nautical, or feet where it says meters;
• the reversed relationship, which states a true pair of facts in the wrong causal order;
• the plausible but wrong threshold, a number close enough to the real one to feel familiar;
• the right answer to a different question, correct in itself but not responsive to the stem;
• the almost right citation, a real regulation that governs something adjacent.

Naming the pattern is what converts a guess into an elimination, and on a three option item one elimination is worth a great deal.

If you do not pass

Section 107.71 (opens in a new tab) requires you to wait 14 calendar days after failing before you may reapply for the test. No instructor endorsement is needed to retest. Your airman knowledge test report lists the subject codes for the questions you missed, and that list is a precise map of what to restudy. Keep the failed report, because the testing center will require it before your retest. Our knowledge code reference translates the codes into topics.

After you pass

Results generally post to IACRA within about 48 hours. From there you complete the application and your temporary certificate follows once the security check clears. See how to get your remote pilot certificate for the full sequence.

The certificate itself does not expire, but your privileges depend on recency. Section 107.65 (opens in a new tab) requires that within the previous 24 calendar months you have done one of three things: passed an initial knowledge test, completed recurrent training covering the areas in 107.73, or, if you hold a Part 61 certificate other than a student certificate and meet the 61.56 flight review requirement, completed training covering the areas in 107.74. The recurrent route is a free online course rather than a trip back to a testing center. Our recurrent training guide and the recency calculator work out your date.

Sources: 14 CFR 107.65 (opens in a new tab), 107.67 (opens in a new tab), 107.71 (opens in a new tab), 107.73 (opens in a new tab), 107.74 (opens in a new tab); FAA-S-ACS-10B; FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix; PSI UAG Applicant Information Bulletin; FAA Airman Testing Community Advisory, August 2025 and August 2026.