The Part 107 study guide
The FAA publishes one and it is free. It is also dated August 2016, and the rules it describes for flying at night and flying over people were replaced in 2021. Here is what to read, in what order, and which part of the official guide to skip.
The reading list
The regulation. Operating limits, categories, eligibility, recency.
The only acceptable source for a rule. eCFR publishes the date its text is current to.
The Airman Certification Standards — every testable knowledge element, and the shape of the test.
The specification the test is written to. Appendix 1 has the length, the time, the pass mark and the weighting.
FAA guidance written against the amended rule.
What the regulation implies but does not spell out — civil twilight in practice, scalable preflight inspection, maintenance recordkeeping.
The Remote Pilot Study Guide. Weather, airspace, loading, physiology, radio, airports.
⚠️ August 2016. Excellent on subject matter, out of date on every rule. Do not study its regulations chapter.
The FAA’s own published sample set.
The real format, from the party that writes the real questions. Worth doing once, near the end.
A study plan proportional to the test
The FAA publishes what each area is worth, which means the study time is not a guess. Operations is more than a third of the test; Loading and performance is under a tenth. Splitting your time evenly across five areas is the most common way to over-prepare for the smallest one.
I. Regulations
15–25% · 12 of 60The largest single source of certain marks on this test, because the answers are written down: they are in the regulation, they are numeric, and they do not depend on judgment. Registration, the operating limits, who may manipulate the controls, what has to be reported and when, the four categories of operations over human beings, and Remote ID. Almost every question in this area has a section number behind it, and every explanation here gives you that number.
II. Airspace Classification and Operating Requirements
15–25% · 12 of 60Two questions, over and over, in different clothes: what class of airspace is this, and do I need authorization to fly in it. The classes have shapes and dimensions you can learn in an afternoon; the part that takes longer is reading them off a sectional chart, where the answer is carried by the colour and the style of a line rather than by a label. This area also holds the flight hazards — wires, towers, thermal plumes, unmanned balloons — which are pure recall.
III. Weather
11–16% · 8 of 60Half of this area is decoding: a METAR and a TAF are dense, abbreviated and entirely learnable, and questions on them are free marks once the format is familiar. The other half is density altitude and stability — why a hot, humid, high afternoon gives a small aircraft less to work with, and which clouds are telling you the air is about to become violent.
IV. Loading and Performance
7–11% · 5 of 60The smallest area on the test and the one candidates most often leave until last, which is a mistake only because it is also the shortest to learn. Weight against lift, where the centre of gravity sits relative to the centre of pressure, what a load factor is and why it climbs so fast past a 45-degree bank, and what an overloaded aircraft does differently — a short list of consequences that appears again and again.
V. Operations
35–45% · 23 of 60The biggest area by a wide margin — more than a third of the test — and the one that is really six subjects wearing one label. Radio procedure and the phonetic alphabet; how a non-towered airport works and how manned traffic announces itself; lithium batteries and lost link; the five hazardous attitudes and their antidotes; what dehydration and fatigue and night vision do to a person; and what a preflight inspection has to cover. Spend your time here in proportion to its weight.
The percentages are bands from Appendix 1 of FAA-S-ACS-10B; the question counts are how this site’s full-length mock deals a 60-question test, and every one sits inside its published band.
The syllabus is finite, and it is published
This is the fact that changes how people study for this test. There is no hidden material: the ACS lists 176 knowledge elements across 5 areas and seventeen tasks, each element a single sentence describing something you can be asked about. Read them and you have read the entire syllabus — it takes about twenty minutes.
It is also the reason a practice test that reports ACS codes is worth more than one that reports a score. A score tells you that you got 46 out of 60. A code tells you that you do not know UA.I.E.K16, which is impact kinetic energy, which is one paragraph of § 107.120 — and you can fix it in five minutes.
Find out which elements you are missing.
60 questions at the published weighting, scored at 70%, reported as ACS codes.
Take a full-length mockFrequently asked
- Does the FAA publish a Part 107 study guide?
- Yes — FAA-G-8082-22, the Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide, free to download. It is dated August 2016, which matters: it predates the 2021 amendment that rewrote night operations and added operations over people, so its regulations chapter is out of date.
- What should I study instead of the regulations chapter?
- 14 CFR part 107 itself, on eCFR, which publishes the date its text is current to. It is shorter than most candidates expect and it is where the answers actually are — every regulatory question on this site cites the section it came from.
- How long does it take to study for Part 107?
- There is no published figure and this site does not invent one. What is published is the size of the syllabus: five areas of operation, seventeen tasks and 176 knowledge elements, each one a sentence. That is the whole of what is testable.
- Is the FAA study guide enough on its own?
- For weather, airspace, loading, physiology, radio and airport operations, it is genuinely good and nothing has changed. For the regulations you need the current CFR, and for the shape of the test you need the ACS — which is also what the test is written to.
- What is the difference between the study guide and the ACS?
- The study guide teaches the subject matter. The Airman Certification Standards is the specification the test is built from: it lists every knowledge element that can be tested, and its codes are what your test report prints back at you.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the date it was read and what the document says about its own currency. Regulations change by amendment; where a source has moved on since the date shown, the source is right and this page is out of date.
- FAA-G-8082-22 — Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide Read August 27, 2026· August 2016 — predates Amendment 107-8 ⚠️ USE FOR SUBJECT MATTER, NEVER FOR A RULE. Airspace classes, METAR and TAF decoding, density altitude, load factor, physiology, radio procedure and airport data are unchanged and are sourced here. Its regulations chapter, its night rules and its silence on operations over people are all out of date, and a question sourced here on any of those is a bug.
- FAA-S-ACS-10B — Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airman Certification Standards Read August 27, 2026· Material in FAA-S-ACS-10B is effective April 6, 2021 The shape of the test and the ACS codes. Appendix 1 publishes the 60-question length, the two-hour limit, the 70% passing score and the share of the test each area of operation gets. Appendix 3 publishes that a passing test report is valid for 24 calendar months.
- 14 CFR part 107 — Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (eCFR) Read August 27, 2026· eCFR reports title 14 up to date as of 2026-08-25 The regulation itself, and the only acceptable source on this site for an operating limit, a category, an eligibility rule or a recency rule. Amendment 107-8 (86 FR 4381, 15 January 2021) is the one that rewrote night operations and added operations over human beings.
- AC 107-2A — Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (small UAS) Read August 27, 2026· Dated 2/1/21 FAA guidance written against the amended rule. Used for the things the regulation implies without spelling out — what civil twilight means in practice, what a scalable preflight inspection is, how maintenance recordkeeping is expected to work.
- FAA — Unmanned Aircraft General (UAG) Sample Questions Read August 27, 2026 The FAA’s own published sample set, linked and never reproduced here. Read so that this site’s questions match the real format — a stem, three options, one defensible answer — and so that no question here duplicates one of the FAA’s.
Page facts last verified August 27, 2026.
Part 107 Drills is independent practice material. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration, PSI Services LLC, or any knowledge testing centre. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual FAA knowledge test. Regulatory text and FAA publications are works of the United States Government and are in the public domain; where this site states a rule, it cites the section it came from and the date that section was read.