Orientation

This chapter is the map. Nothing in it will be on the test as a question, but all of it changes how you should spend your hours: what the test is, where its weight actually sits, and what the rest of the site does for you. Ten minutes here saves a week of studying the wrong things.

§ 1.1 — THE RULEBOOK

What Part 107 is, and who it is for

Part 107 is the section of the Code of Federal Regulations that governs small drones flown for anything other than pure recreation. “Small” has a precise meaning: an unmanned aircraft weighing less than 55 pounds on takeoff, counting everything on board or attached to it.

14 CFR § 107.3

The rule does not apply to aircraft flown under the recreational exception in federal statute, which is the world TRUST belongs to. If you are flying strictly for fun, within the community-based safety guidelines, Part 107 does not govern the flight. If you are flying for anything else, it does, and “anything else” is wider than most people expect.

14 CFR § 107.1(b)(2) · AC 107-2A, ¶ 4.1 and n. 1

The centerpiece of the rule is a person: the remote pilot in command. Someone must be designated for every flight, and that person is directly responsible for the operation and is the final authority over it. Nobody may work the controls of a small UAS unless they hold a remote pilot certificate, or are working under the direct supervision of someone who does and who can take the controls instantly.

14 CFR § 107.19(a)-(b) · § 107.12(a)-(b)

To qualify, you must be at least 16, able to read, speak, write, and understand English, and have no physical or mental condition you know of that would interfere with safe operation. You must also demonstrate aeronautical knowledge, which for nearly everyone means passing the test described next. The rule asks for demonstrated knowledge. There is no flight test, no logbook, no instructor sign-off.

14 CFR § 107.61(a)-(d)

§ 1.2 — THE TEST

The knowledge test

The test is called Unmanned Aircraft General - Small, abbreviated UAG. It is a computer test taken at a PSI testing center, and the specification is short enough to hold in your head.

UAG test specification

Scored questions	60	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Unscored validation questions	5 more	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Time allowed	120 minutes	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Passing score	70% correct	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Retest wait after a failure	14 calendar days	§ 107.71

Seventy percent of 60 is 42, so you may miss 18 scored questions and still pass. The five unscored questions are there so the FAA can see how new questions perform before they count. The bulletin does not say they are marked in any way, so treat all 65 as real. The two hours cover all 65, which works out to a little under two minutes each. That is a comfortable pace for questions of this kind.

UAG Applicant Information Bulletin (PSI), p. 4

Every question is multiple choice with three options, A, B, and C, and the instruction is to select the one best answer. That phrase matters. Wrong options can be partly true, and the job is to find the most complete and correct one.

UAG Applicant Information Bulletin (PSI), p. 4 · FAA Airman Testing Community Advisory, September 2026 Special Edition, pp. 9-10

No instructor endorsement or other written authorization is needed to take it, and none is needed to retest. The FAA’s testing matrix lists a minimum age of 14 to sit the test, while the certificate itself requires 16, so a younger applicant can test early and certify when old enough, provided the test report is still valid by then.

UAG Applicant Information Bulletin (PSI), p. 4 · FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix (rev. 9/25/26), p. 15 · 14 CFR § 107.67(b)(3)

The supplement, and the September 2026 change

Some questions say “refer to Figure 21” and show a slice of a sectional chart, the map pilots fly by. For years those pictures lived in a printed booklet, the testing supplement, which the test center hands you. The booklet is still provided today. But the FAA is moving the pictures onto the screen, embedded in the question itself, and says the date the printed supplements disappear has not been set.

FAA Airman Testing Community Advisory, September 2026 Special Edition, p. 5 · FAA-CT-8080-2H

The practical consequence arrives first. Beginning October 26, 2026, the UAG test includes image-based questions whose pictures are not in the supplement, drawn from current sectional charts. The FAA’s own examples are a Washington sectional and a Las Vegas sectional, each with a question about the airspace or radio frequency of a specific airport. The FAA says the specific images cannot be previewed.

FAA Airman Testing Community Advisory, September 2026 Special Edition, pp. 6, 9-10

The test report you receive afterward lists ACS codes for the areas you missed. The ACS, the Airman Certification Standards, is the FAA’s list of what you are expected to know, and every code looks like UA.II.B.K1: UA for the unmanned standard, a Roman numeral for the area, a letter for the task, and a number for the knowledge item. This site tags its questions and chapters with the same codes, so a failed sitting here and a failed sitting at PSI would point at the same things.

FAA Airman Knowledge Testing Matrix (rev. 9/25/26), p. 15 · FAA-S-ACS-10B, p. 1 (Using the ACS)

§ 1.3 — THE WEIGHTING

Where the questions actually come from

The test has five content areas, and they are not equal. The current specification, published in the PSI applicant bulletin and based on an industry job task analysis completed in 2025, assigns these shares of the items.

UAG Applicant Information Bulletin (PSI), p. 4

Items by content area

Regulations (UA.I)	48%	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Airspace classification and operating requirements (UA.II)	20%	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Weather (UA.III)	5%	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Loading and performance (UA.IV)	2%	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4
Operations (UA.V)	25%	UAG Applicant Information Bulletin, p. 4

Apply those shares to 60 scored questions and you get roughly 29 on regulations, 12 on airspace, 15 on operations, 3 on weather, and 1 on loading. Those counts are arithmetic on the percentages, not a published promise, so expect them to wobble by a question or two.

FAA-S-ACS-10B, Appendix 1, p. A-1 · FAA Airman Testing Community Advisory, August 2025, pp. 3-4

What the weighting means for how you study

Regulations and airspace together are 68 percent of the test, and operations is another 25. That is 93 percent of the questions in three areas. A rough but useful consequence: even if you missed every weather and loading question, you would still have about 56 of 60, well above the 42 needed. That is not an invitation to skip them. It tells you where an extra hour pays off most, and where it pays least.

Three cautions keep this from becoming a trap. First, weather knowledge leaks into other areas: the visibility and cloud-clearance minimums are regulations, and the ACS lists “basic weather minimums” under airspace operating requirements, so a good share of what looks like weather is scored elsewhere. Second, the Operations area is a grab bag of topics, among them radio calls, airport markings, decision-making, emergencies, physiology, maintenance, and reading charts. It is broad rather than deep, and most of it rewards plain vocabulary and common sense. Third, the regulations are not hard because they are subtle. They are hard because there are many numbers and every one of them is a question: 400 feet, 87 knots, 3 statute miles, 500 and 2,000, 24 months, 14 days.

14 CFR § 107.51 · § 107.65 · § 107.71 · FAA-S-ACS-10B, UA.II.B.K1, UA.V.B.K6a, UA.V (Tasks A-F)

So the plan has a shape. Spend your first and longest effort on regulations and airspace. Treat operations as a steady middle. Learn weather and loading well enough to answer the one or two questions you will see, and because weather is where real flights get cancelled, not just where tests get won.

§ 1.4 — THE SITE

How this site is organized

The study guide has eight chapters, and they follow the FAA’s own structure so that your chapter, your quiz scores, and your test report all line up. Orientation is this one. The rest are, in order:

2. Regulations, the Part 107 rules and the numbers inside them: /study/regulations/.
3. Airspace, the lettered classes and the special areas: /study/airspace/.
4. Sectional charts, reading the map: /study/charts/.
5. Weather, sources and effects: /study/weather/.
6. Loading and performance: /study/loading/.
7. Operations, from preflight to radio calls to decision-making: /study/operations/.
8. Test day, what the sitting is like: /study/test-day/.

Each chapter ends with what you should now be able to do, a link to its flashcard deck, and a quiz scoped to that chapter. Where a topic is hard because it is spatial, the chapter hands off to a deep dive, a single page built around something you can move. Airspace is much easier once you have dragged a drone through a cross-section of the sky in Airspace, from the ground up; a sectional chart stops being a blur after Reading a sectional; and the cloud rule makes sense the moment you watch the envelope turn red in Cloud clearance. The other deep dives cover METAR and TAF, density altitude, latitude and longitude, weight and balance, and right-of-way.

The quiz has four ways in. A full sitting is 60 questions against a two-hour clock, weighted by area as above, with no feedback until the end, and a result that reads like the real report. A chapter quiz is a short set from one area with immediate feedback. A drill replays questions you have missed. The weakest set is assembled from your history, aimed at the areas where you are losing the most. The flashcards cover the numbers and definitions that simply have to be recalled, and they use spaced repetition: cards you know come back later, cards you miss come back soon.

Around those sit reference pages. Logistics walks the whole path from getting an FAA Tracking Number to the permanent certificate. Regs sets TRUST and Part 107 side by side. Sources says what each FAA document is and what to read in it, and Figures shows the supplement figures on their own. Your progress lives in your browser, with no account, so it stays on the device you use; if you want to move it, Progress can export it to a file.

§ 1.5 — THE PLAN

A study order and a realistic schedule

Read the chapters in the order above for a first pass, with one adjustment: do Operations before Weather and Loading. That puts the effort where the test weight is, and it means the most test-heavy 93 percent of the content is behind you by the time you reach the lightest areas. Start the numbers flashcard deck on day one and never stop; the thresholds are the part of the course that decays fastest.

Here is a schedule for two to three weeks at about an hour a day. The time estimates are judgment, not data, so adjust them to how you actually learn.

In the first week, read Regulations and Airspace, doing the chapter quiz after each. Open the numbers deck every day. Expect Regulations to take several sittings; it is the longest chapter for a reason. Do not worry yet about scores. The aim is vocabulary.

In the second week, read Sectional charts, Operations, Weather, and Loading, each followed by its chapter quiz, and work the deep dives for charts and airspace until you can explain them aloud. Late in the week take your first full sitting. Treat the score as a measurement, not a verdict, and spend the next day on the breakdown by area.

In the third week, alternate. Drill what you missed, read the explanations again, then take another full sitting in the second half of the week. Read the Test day chapter, read the logistics page, and schedule the test. If you are short on time, the two-week version is the same sequence with each week’s work compressed into five days and the sittings moved up, but do not drop the sittings.

A good moment to book is when two sittings in a row land comfortably above passing, say in the high 70s or 80s. Seventy is the line; the margin is there because the real test will include sectional images you have not seen, and a nervous day costs a few points.

Using the quiz and cards well

Both tools are only as good as the signal you give them, and the most common failure is giving them flattering signals.

On flashcards, rate honestly. Hitting Good on a card you hesitated over teaches the scheduler that you know it, and it will not come back until you have forgotten it. If you had to reconstruct the answer, that is Hard. If you could not produce it, that is Again, and Again is the card working as designed, not a failure. Say the answer out loud before you flip, and do not count a vague feeling of familiarity as recall.

On the quiz, read the explanation after every question, including the ones you got right. A right answer reached by elimination or luck is a wrong answer waiting to happen, and the explanation is where the rule’s reason lives. Follow the citation under a question you missed to the underlying text at least occasionally; the test was written from those sources, and the wording is part of what you are learning.

Use drill for misses, and use it soon after you miss, then again a few days later. Use chapter quizzes while you are learning, and save full sittings for when you want a measurement. One more warning: the question bank is finite. If you start recognizing questions by their first few words, your score is measuring your memory of the bank, not your knowledge of the subject. When that happens, go back to the chapter text rather than taking yet another sitting.

§ 1.6 — FROM TRUST

From TRUST to Part 107

If you hold a TRUST certificate you already know the core of safe flying: keep the aircraft in sight, give way to manned aircraft, stay at or below 400 feet in Class G airspace, and get authorization before flying in controlled airspace near an airport, all of which are conditions of the recreational exception. Part 107 keeps that spirit and changes the mechanics. You need a remote pilot certificate (age 16 or older), earned by passing the UAG test described above. Your aircraft must be registered whatever it weighs, since the only registration exemption is for recreational-only aircraft at 0.55 pounds or less, and registered aircraft fall under Remote ID. You must carry your certificate and identification when you fly. You must stay current: within each 24 calendar months you pass a knowledge test or complete recurrent training, which for most people is an online FAASafety.gov course rather than a second test. In return the privileges are broader. You can fly for compensation or business, fly at night with lighted anti-collision lighting once you have passed the post-April-2021 test or training, fly over people under the rule’s categories, and apply for waivers to the operating limits. And the weight lands on you: you become the final authority for the flight. The Regs page lays the two systems side by side.

49 U.S.C. § 44809(a) as quoted in AC 107-2A, ¶ 4.1 n. 1 · 14 CFR § 107.1 · § 107.12 · § 107.61(a) · § 107.7(a)(1) · § 107.13 · § 107.65 · § 48.15 · § 48.100 · § 89.101 · § 107.29(a) · § 107.39 · § 107.200 · § 107.19(b)

A note on the FAA’s own study guide

The FAA publishes a free Remote Pilot Study Guide, and you should know what it is. The edition in circulation is dated August 2016, which is before the 2021 amendments to Part 107. Those amendments added operations over people, Remote ID, and night operations, and the FAA announced that those topics would be folded into the UAG test from April 6, 2021. The guide lists twelve knowledge areas; the regulation now lists thirteen, the extra one being operation at night. The guide also points to the original Advisory Circular 107-2, which has been replaced by 107-2A. The sample questions the FAA publishes are dated 2021, before the image-based questions began.

FAA-G-8082-22 (Aug. 2016), Introduction and Ch. 1 · 14 CFR § 107.73(a)-(m) · FAA, Changes to Testing for a Remote Pilot Certificate (Apr. 5, 2021) · UAG Sample Questions (8/10/2021)

None of this makes the study guide useless; most of its weather, airspace, and decision-making material is still sound, and it is worth reading. But where it disagrees with the current regulation, this site follows the current regulation as published in the eCFR, along with Advisory Circular 107-2A and the Part 48 and Part 89 text. If you notice a place where this site and the study guide differ, check the citation under the claim before you trust either of us.

You should now be able to

• State the format of the UAG test: question count, time, passing score, and what an unscored question is.
• Say which areas carry the most weight on the current test and why the old ACS percentages are out of date.
• Explain why a sectional chart image on the test may not be in the printed supplement.
• Choose a study order and schedule that spends the most time on regulations and airspace.
• Rate flashcards and use quiz explanations in a way that gives the scheduler an honest signal.
• Name what changes when moving from TRUST to Part 107.