What the Part 107 exam covers
Six knowledge areas, roughly weighted, and an honest account of which one actually decides the result.
Researched from published specifications and verified owner reviews · updated 2026
The short answer
The Part 107 initial knowledge exam is 60 multiple-choice questions in two hours with a 70 percent pass mark. It covers regulations, airspace classification and operating requirements, weather and its effects on performance, loading and performance, and operational topics including radio procedure, crew resource management, aeronautical decision making, physiology, emergency procedures, maintenance and preflight inspection. Airspace and chart reading is where most failures happen.
The Part 107 exam is an aeronautical knowledge test that happens to be about drones, and the emphasis in that sentence matters. Candidates who fail almost always fail because they studied the drone and not the aviation. Sixty questions, two hours, three answer options each, seventy percent to pass, and the questions refer to a supplement booklet of charts and figures that the testing centre provides.
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The value of a test-prep book over the free FAA publications is not the content, which is the same material, it is the ordering. This one is arranged by knowledge area with a question bank that mirrors the exam structure, so you can find out which area is weak while there is still time to fix it rather than at the testing centre.
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The knowledge areas, roughly weighted
The FAA publishes the areas covered and an approximate weighting. Treat the percentages as guidance rather than a guarantee, because individual exam forms vary and the published ranges are broad on purpose.
| Knowledge area | Approximate share | Difficulty for a newcomer |
|---|---|---|
| Regulations | 15 to 25 percent | Low. Memorisation, and the numbers are finite. |
| Airspace classification and operating requirements | 15 to 25 percent | High. Requires reading a sectional chart fluently. |
| Weather sources and effects on performance | 11 to 16 percent | Medium to high. METAR and TAF decoding is a language. |
| Loading and performance | 7 to 11 percent | Low to medium. Conceptual rather than arithmetic-heavy. |
| Operations: procedure, decision making, physiology, emergencies | 35 to 45 percent | Medium. Broad, but mostly reasonable from first principles. |
Regulations
This is the block everyone finds manageable, because it is a bounded set of facts. Expect questions on who may act as remote pilot in command, the eligibility requirements, aircraft registration, the operating limitations, which sections may be waived, accident reporting thresholds and timelines, the requirement to make the aircraft and records available on request, and the alcohol and drug provisions.
The reporting rules catch people out. An accident must be reported to the FAA within a defined short window when it results in serious injury, loss of consciousness, or property damage above a stated threshold to anything other than the aircraft. Learn the number and the timeframe as a pair rather than separately.
Airspace and operating requirements
This is the section that decides the exam. You will be given figures from a sectional chart and asked what class of airspace exists at a named location, up to what altitude, whether an authorization is required, and what the floor and ceiling of a shelf are. There is no way to reason your way to these answers without chart literacy.
The specific skills to drill are reading the blue and magenta rings and shading, interpreting the segmented magenta line for surface Class E, decoding the bracketed floor and ceiling numbers on Class B and C shelves, identifying restricted, prohibited, warning and alert areas along with military training routes and military operations areas, and finding the airport data blocks with their frequencies and elevations.
The single most useful preparation for this section is not a question bank, it is spending an evening with the current sectional supplement and the legend beside it, naming the airspace over twenty locations you choose at random. Start with reading a sectional chart and the airspace classes reference.
Weather
Two halves. The first is decoding aviation weather products, primarily METAR observations and TAF forecasts, which are a compressed notation you have to learn to read rather than reason about. Practise until a raw METAR resolves into wind, visibility, cloud layers, temperature, dew point and altimeter without effort.
The second half is meteorological effect: stability and instability, the relationship between temperature and dew point spread and fog formation, thunderstorm lifecycle and the reason to stay well away from one, wind shear, and density altitude. Density altitude is the concept most worth understanding properly, because it explains why an aircraft that hovers at forty percent throttle at sea level struggles at 8,000 feet on a hot day, and a Kestrel 3500FW weather meter ($219) reads it directly in the field.
Loading and performance
Lighter than most candidates fear. Expect conceptual questions on the effect of added weight on endurance and manoeuvrability, centre of gravity and why a badly balanced payload degrades handling, the effect of density altitude on performance, and the relationship between battery condition and available power. There is very little arithmetic and no weight-and-balance calculation of the kind manned pilots do.
Even so, this section reflects a real operational discipline. Every gram you add to an aircraft costs endurance and margin, which is why the flight time calculator and the thrust to weight calculator exist, and why a filter fitted for one shot can change a registration answer as well as a performance one.
Operations, judgement and procedure
The largest block by count and the least intimidating by content. It covers radio communication procedure and phraseology, airport operations and traffic pattern awareness, crew resource management with a visual observer, aeronautical decision making and the hazardous attitudes framework, physiology including vision at night and the effects of fatigue and dehydration, emergency procedures including lost link behaviour, and maintenance and preflight inspection.
Most of it can be answered by asking what a careful professional would do, with two exceptions. Radio phraseology has correct forms that are not guessable, and the hazardous attitudes have five named types with specific antidotes that appear as recall questions. Learn both as lists.
The preflight material is the part that should follow you out of the exam room and into your actual flying. Our own version, written to be used rather than memorised, is the preflight checklist.
What is not on the exam
There is no practical flight test, no logged hours requirement, and no model-specific content. Nothing on the exam asks about a particular aircraft, camera, gimbal or app. That is worth knowing for two reasons: it means your flying experience does not directly help you pass, and it means passing does not demonstrate that you can fly. Those are separate competencies and only one of them is examined.
Photography, videography and photogrammetry are entirely absent as well, which surprises people who assume a commercial drone certificate is about commercial drone work. It is about not hitting an aeroplane. The commercial craft is on you, and it starts on the photogrammetry workflow and roof inspection workflow pages.
How to use this weighting when you study
Do not allocate study time in proportion to the exam weighting. Allocate it in proportion to weighting multiplied by your own difficulty. For a typical candidate with no aviation background that means roughly half the total study time on airspace and charts, a quarter on weather, and the remaining quarter spread across regulations, loading and operations, because the last three are largely memorisation and reasoning that consolidate quickly.
A week-by-week plan built on that principle, adjusted for three different starting backgrounds, is on how to study for Part 107. Worked questions in the style of the exam, and the correct way to use a question bank, are on practice questions. And once you hold the certificate, the currency requirement is on recurrent training.
Everything here is researched from published FAA material and is not legal advice. Confirm the current exam structure and content outline with the FAA at faa.gov/uas before you book, because both the airman certification standards and the testing arrangements are updated from time to time.
Questions people ask
+ How many questions are on the Part 107 exam and what is the pass mark?
The initial aeronautical knowledge test, designated UAG, is 60 multiple-choice questions with three answer options each, and you have two hours. The pass mark is 70 percent, meaning 42 correct answers. You get your result immediately at the testing centre, and a failed attempt can be retaken after a mandatory waiting period.
+ Which knowledge area is the biggest part of the exam?
Regulations is the largest single block, typically cited at 15 to 25 percent of the exam, followed by airspace and requirements at 15 to 25 percent and weather at 11 to 16 percent. In practice airspace is the section that decides most outcomes, because regulations questions can be reasoned about while airspace questions require chart literacy you either have or do not.
+ Do I need to bring a sectional chart to the exam?
No, and you should not try. The testing centre provides a supplement booklet containing every chart, figure and legend the questions refer to, and it is the same supplement used across FAA knowledge tests. Practise with the current official supplement so that finding a figure in it is automatic, because time pressure on the chart questions is real.
+ How much of the exam is about the drone itself?
Less than most candidates expect. Loading and performance, and aircraft maintenance and preflight inspection, together account for a modest share, and the questions are conceptual rather than model-specific. The exam is an aeronautical knowledge test, so it is far more interested in whether you understand airspace, weather and regulations than in whether you know your aircraft's specifications.
+ Is there a practical or flying test?
No. Part 107 certification is a knowledge exam only, with no flight test and no logged flight hours requirement. That is a real difference from manned pilot certification and it puts the responsibility for actual flying competence entirely on you, which is worth taking seriously before a client is depending on the outcome.
+ What if I already hold a manned pilot certificate?
Holders of a Part 61 pilot certificate who have completed a flight review within the preceding 24 calendar months can take a free online course instead of the paid knowledge exam, then apply through IACRA. That path skips the testing centre entirely, which is a substantial saving in both money and preparation time.
