Passing the Part 107 test

Today was a day I've been preparing for and looking forward to for several months: I passed the test for the FAA's Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate, casually known as a drone pilot's license. It's nice to have this done – I had started studying the test in March of this year, but I didn't get it scheduled before my knee surgery in May so that pushed my plans back a bit.

In this post, I'll cover what a Part 107 certificate is, why I wanted one, and a few details of the process.

Why Bother?

In 2016, as the use of unmanned drones was growing rapidly, the FAA created a set of regulations to track drone pilots for accountability and traceability and to impose flight rules and restrictions on commercial drone activities. These regulations are called the Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Regulations (Part 107), and you can find the official documentation here on the FAA website. Among other things, Part 107 outlines a process for becoming a certificated remote pilot, which is a requirement for legally operating a drone under Part 107.

Note that Part 107 certification is required for commercial drone operation, but is not a requirement for recreational use of small drones. I've never made any attempt to make money with my drone or used it to engage in any commercial activities, so the flights I've flown to date haven't required a Part 107 certificate.

So why bother to get a Part 107 certificate? Well, in addition to being a requirement for commercial use of a drone, Part 107 is a requirement for flying a drone at night (as covered in § 107.29 Operation at night), and as a longtime fan of night photography, I'd love to be able to use my drone at night. This also applies to getting photographs of sunrises and sunsets, since the best colors in the sky often appear shortly before or after sunrise or sunset.

I currently use an app to obtain FAA authorization for flights in controlled airspace (as covered in Cleared For Takeoff), but that app won't give me authorization for night flights, because I don't have a Part 107 certificate on file. Once I have my Part 107 certificate and add it to my profile in the app, I'll be able to get authorizations 24 hours per day.

There's one other theoretical benefit to getting a Part 107 certificate. Drones are limited to flying 400 feet AGL (above ground level), but a Part 107 certificated pilot can apply to the FAA for a waiver to fly a drone higher than 400 feet AGL if desired. The waiver needs to be applied for at least 90 days in advance, and it's not a given that it will be approved even then, so I doubt I'll ever bother to use that feature.

If you're curious why drones are limited to 400 feet AGL, it's because manned aircraft pilots are required to stay above 500 feet AGL except when taking off and landing, and the FAA decided to provide a 100 foot separation between those two regulations to minimize the risk of drone-airplane collisions.

Test Preparation

The Part 107 test is 60 multiple choice questions covering drone regulations, weather and meteorology, flight safety, airport operations, reading aeronautical sectional charts, the FAA's national airspace system, and related topics.

There have always been numerous pilot training organizations around the US, and many of those now offer training programs to help prepare for the Part 107 test. There are a bunch of good options, but after doing a bit of research I decided to go with the popular Pilot Ground School course from UAV Coach. It's a self-paced set of over 80 videos covering all the key concepts, as well as FAQs and other resources, and they have an online practice test that you can take an unlimited number of times.

I took detailed notes while watching all of the videos, read all of the FAQs and other resources, and also watched several in-depth videos from other flight training organizations. I'd guess I put in 30-40 hours on those activities, and then once I felt ready to start taking the practice tests (which present 60 randomly selected questions from a database of questions known to have been used on the Part 107 test in past years), I took a practice test almost every day over the last month.

I also spent a lot of time studying sectional charts, because I had heard that sectional chart questions – and in particular overlapping airspace questions on sectional charts – would likely be the hardest for a person like me with no previous flying experience. I would go over an area of a sectional chart methodically, and look up every detail that I didn't understand. To keep that interesting, I reviewed the sectional charts around all of the cities I've lived in. (Sadly, my test included no questions about the controlled airspace around SeaTac or O'Hare, but I was ready if it did!)

Meanwhile, I scheduled my test appointment for July 25 at Summit Aviation in Bozeman, about an hour from home. The passing score for the test is 70%, and after I was getting at least 90% every time on the practice tests, I felt like I was ready.

Test Day

The testing location was in a big gray metal building along the back (northeast) side of Bozeman airport. There were two of us scheduled to take the Part 107 test on that day, and after the proctor checked our IDs and registered us, she directed us to empty our pockets into small lockers – no reference materials allowed.

I was assigned to a cubicle with a computer in it, and the test was done online in a secured browser that only had access to the test software. They also gave me a calculator, two pencils, a piece of scrap paper, and the current year's Airman Knowledge Testing Supplement for Sport Pilot, Recreational Pilot, Remote Pilot, and Private Pilot, which is a set of charts, tables, and diagrams that are referenced by some of the test questions. For example, a question might say something like "refer to Figure 20, Section 3: what is the radio frequency for monitoring pilot activity in the area around such-and-such airport?"

After 33 minutes, I was done. The two-hour limit (2 minutes per question) seems excessive – these aren't time-consuming questions requiring solving equations or anything like that. They're one- or two-sentence questions with three multiple-choice answers to choose from, so either you know the answer in a few seconds or you don't. And there are no reference materials to look at, so it's hard to imagine how a person could average 2 minutes each on these questions.

I missed 3 of the 60 questions, which felt right – there were two or three times when I was uncertain of my answer. They provide you with a printout that shows topic codes for the questions you missed, and you can look up those codes on the FAA website. My three misses were all questions about specific terminology or jargon. I was pleased that none of my misses were related to sectional charts or airspace, since that's what I had focused on during my preparation.

Next Steps

Now that I've passed the test, the FAA knows that I have the required knowledge for my Part 107 certificate, but they don't yet know whether I'm a terrorist. So the next step is to apply online for a Part 107 remote pilot certificate, referencing my test ID to prove that I passed, and then the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will do a Security Threat Assessment to make sure that it's OK to grant my license. That usually takes 10 days, and if all goes well then they will send me a printed Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate.