Changes Are Coming to the Part 107 Test

[Russ Still]

Questions are currently being changed and reworded on a regular basis. This means that it will become more and more likely that you'll see questions on the FAA exam that you've never seen before. Know the concepts, however, and it won't matter how they are worded. But the bigger news is the structural change to the FAA exam itself. This will render memorization ineffective as a test prep strategy. The changes are described in this short article.

Gold Seal UAV Ground School | Pass your Part 107 Exam

www.uavgroundschool.com

 

[sar104]

Rather speculative, but those kinds of changes would be improvements.

 

[Russ Still]

Rather speculative, but those kinds of changes would be improvements.

It's not all that speculative. This comes directly from the FAA and I've had a long discussion about it with the FAA Program Manager in charge. It is going to happen.

 

[sar104]

It's not all that speculative. This comes directly from the FAA and I've had a long discussion about it with the FAA Program Manager in charge. It is going to happen.

Fair enough - it was not supported by much other than speculation in the article though.

 

[PhantomFandom]

Fair enough - it was not supported by much other than speculation in the article though.

Totally agree. There was a lot of "would like to" and "will sometime in the future" but nothing definitive.

In many fields, the exams have wisely moved from straight question and answer to practical or practicum testing. Instead of testing "what you know" they test what you can do. I don't see the FAA and the new testing provider being able to make the switch all that quickly. In general it takes a very long time to roll out new testing methodology. It takes a lot of beta testing, and feedback. Add in a government entity which at best moves at a glacial pace and is terribly underfunded, and you can see how we won't see any changes quickly.

Of course it is desperately needed. No one should be able to pass an exam through memorization. That is a pointless exercise. It is always best to pass by knowing the core concepts and applying them. It shocked me when I took my private pilot's written exam way back that the entire question pool (with correct answers) was freely and legally available. Although I didn't use them to memorize anything, I did use them to take sample exams once I was ready to schedule the real thing. Passing those questions gave me the additional confidence to know that I was ready. I can imagine though that many people used them to just memorize the answers.

The nice thing about the Part 107 exam is that the questions were basically from the same material and covered a subset of the same core concepts as the private pilot's exam. However, I don't think that the exam as it currently stands makes one a more skilled UAV pilot. It can make one a more informed and safer UAV pilot if they actually do learn and use the concepts. A true practical exam for both knowledge and operation would help make better UAV pilots.

 

[TriadX1]

That sounds great! I have always been bad at memorization as I am more of a conceptual/visual thinker. I remember being confused as to why my teacher made us memorize Pi down to the 8th digit, when all a person needs to do is simply take any circle and divide its circumference by its diameter and you will get Pi to a literally infinite precision. Memorization may be faster in some situations, but comprehension adapts to all scenarios and thus ultimately wins over memorization.

 

[raymairjr]

Questions are currently being changed and reworded on a regular basis. This means that it will become more and more likely that you'll see questions on the FAA exam that you've never seen before. Know the concepts, however, and it won't matter how they are worded. But the bigger news is the structural change to the FAA exam itself. This will render memorization ineffective as a test prep strategy. The changes are described in this short article.

Gold Seal UAV Ground School | Pass your Part 107 Exam

www.uavgroundschool.com

I registered today for the Gold Seal course and will take it as soon as I can afford it. Never hurts to have knowledge even though I'm only doing drones for a hobby