The Airman Certification Standards (ACS) is an essential tool for anyone preparing for the Part 107 exam. It’s a comprehensive guide the FAA provides that outlines what you’ll be tested on. In this blog post and video, I’ll walk you through how to use the Part 107 ACS effectively.
Understanding the ACS
The ACS is a checklist of topics you must know to pass the Part 107 exam. The FAA has been transparent about what they’ll test, ensuring that aspiring drone pilots know exactly what to study. This approach is standard for all FAA pilot certificates and ratings, including the Part 107 for small unmanned aircraft systems.
Navigating the ACS
The ACS is structured to be user-friendly, allowing you to use it as a study checklist. However, determining the depth of knowledge required for each topic can be challenging. This is where a good teacher comes in, helping you discern between high-level awareness and in-depth knowledge requirements.
How to Access the ACS
- Google Search: Simply type “FAA Part 107 Airman Certification Standards” into Google.
- Ensure Authenticity: Access the document from the official FAA website (faa.gov). While other sites might offer versions of the ACS, the FAA’s site guarantees the most current and accurate version.
- Download and Print: The ACS is a 35-page document detailing everything you need to know for the exam. Consider printing it out and using it as a study checklist.
Breaking Down the ACS
The ACS is divided into five main sections:
- Regulations: This covers general regulations, operating rules, certification requirements, waiver requirements, operations over people, and remote ID.
- Airspace Classification and Operating Requirements: Understand different airspace classes and their operating rules.
- Aviation Weather: This section delves into weather sources, how to interpret weather reports, and the effects of weather on drone performance.
- Loading and Performance: You’ll learn about weight and balance considerations here.
- Operations: This comprehensive section covers radio communication procedures, airport operations, emergency procedures, aeronautical decision-making, physiology, and maintenance and inspection procedures.
Using the ACS for Exam Preparation
The ACS is not just a study guide; it’s also a tool to gauge your preparedness. After studying a topic, check it off your list. If you encounter unfamiliar topics during your exam prep, the ACS can guide you on what to focus on.
Post-Exam: Interpreting Your Results with the ACS
After taking the exam, you’ll receive a printout. If you didn’t score 100%, this document would have codes indicating areas where you fell short. These codes correspond to specific sections of the ACS, allowing you to pinpoint your weak spots.
For instance, if your printout indicates a shortfall in “UAE1B K10”, you can refer to the ACS and find that this relates to “Visual Line of Sight Aircraft Operations” under “Operating Rules” in the “Regulations” section.
In Conclusion
The ACS is an invaluable tool for both exam preparation and post-exam review. It clarifies what the FAA expects from drone pilots and offers a structured approach to mastering the required knowledge. As you prepare for your Part 107 exam, keep the ACS close at hand and use it as your roadmap to success.
Safe flying!
FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
How to use the part 107 airman certification standards. So again, the airman certification standards, or the ACs are a set of standards that you are provided with to pass the part 107 exam right from the beginning. So the FAA tells you, we’re going to test you on these things. And here are all the different things that we are going to include on that test. As an educator, this is how you do it, if you’re going to test people on something, you need to tell them what you’re going to test them about. So they provide the same standards for anybody pursuing a pilot certificate or rating, including the part 107, small unmanned aircraft systems, certification or certificate. So the ACS is designed in a way for you to almost use it as a checklist of all the different things that you need to study to pass the part 107 exam. Sometimes it can be difficult to know at what level do I need to know this information? That’s the purpose for this course is I will help you understand exactly at to what level do you need to know the information? Is it just high level you need to be aware of it? Or do you really need to have an intricate knowledge of that particular area of the ACS. So what I would like to do is show you how to use the ACS, and I’ll show you how to download it, let’s do a quick run through of it and how I would use it. If I were preparing for this exam. Myself, this is my suggestions to you on how to prepare for that exam. So what you’re going to do is go to the Google machine here, and you’re going to type in FAA, part 107, you can see already that this FAA part 107 airman certification standards, you just type that into Google, and you want to make sure that you are looking@faa.gov. If you go down, down here, now we’re getting into Amazon, we’re getting into sporties, we’re getting into some of these other websites, that you know, might not necessarily be the most accurate information. sporties is great, you know, I’m sure Amazon’s got some really good documents, but what I’m telling you is that, again, you as remote pilot are responsible for making sure you’re using the most current version. And to know, if you’re using the most current version, you need to go to the FAA website, okay, you can purchase printed copies of the airman certification standards. And what you would do is you would go to the FAA website, and figure out what is the most current version. And then you could go to Amazon or sporties, or any of these other places that you can purchase these books were they’ve given you a printed copy of the airman certification standards. Alright. So again, it’s this, this documents 35 pages long. So it gives you very detailed information about what it is that you need to know to pass the remote pilot exam. They’ve got some information here, acknowledgments, forward, etc. What they’ve done here is they provide you with each release or each revision, they give you the information on what maybe they they changed here, and what what the dates were of what when something was changed. All right. And so they give you some of these major enhancements, some of the things that they have added, specifically, most recently, we have operations over people that was added. And then we’ve got the Table of Contents. Okay. So this page right here, I would print up and use this as a checklist of things that you need to know that you need to study for the part 107 exam, okay? So you always want to make sure that you’ve, you’ve got everything, you don’t want to get there on test day, and you started getting some physiology questions, and you’re like, I didn’t know that that was going to be on the exam. Well, this document tells you that okay, so you can use this to know exactly what you need to study. Once you’ve completed lessons on it, you’ve got on the internet and read about it. You’ve read through some books about the topic. You’ve answered some practice test questions on it, and you’re doing pretty well with those questions. You can check it off that it’s done. Okay. So, the first section, we’re broken up here in to five different sections. Now remember, this course is is divided up into 13 different modules. Okay? And again, the reason for that is some of these areas, specifically, airspace is a very large topic. And so I broke it up into some smaller modules to make it easily digestible and easier for you to understand and to retain that knowledge. Okay. So let’s go through this here. So regulations. So we’re going to talk about what are the regulations for you as a remote pilot. So we’re going to talk about just some of the general regulations. We’ll talk about operating rules. We’ll talk about what is the certifications and what does it mean to have an S UAS rating? How to get waivers what are the requirements for waivers? What are the regulations around operations over people. And then what are the regulations around remote ID or remote identification? Section two is airspace classification and operating requirements. So we’ll talk about airspace classification. What are the different classes of airspace? And then within each one of those classes of airspace, what are your operational requirements, or you are the standard that you need to abide by as a remote pilot? Then we’ll talk about Aviation Weather. We’ll talk about the sources of weather. And this is where do you get weather information? Where do you get reports? How do you read those reports? How do you interpret them. And then we’ll talk about the effects of weather on performance of your drone. Then section four is on loading and performance. So we’ll talk about weight and balance there. And then operations. So this is the actual operation of your drone. We’ll talk about radio communication procedures, airport operations, emergency procedures, aeronautical decision making, that might be a new term for some of you. And that is the idea of how to know that you are safe and healthy for flight, how to know that the conditions are safe for flight, how to make those good decisions, then we’ll talk about physiology, and that specifically like fitness for flight and how you are, you need to be fit for flight, and then maintenance and inspection procedures. And that is it of what we will, we’ll study out of the airman certification standards. So this the appendix there’s got a table, some additional information there for you as well that you can, you can certainly read through. So the way the ACS works is this, we’ve got this airman certification standards concept page, read through this. The highlights here are how to use this ACs. This is very important because when you take the exam, and if you don’t get 100% on the exam, you will get what everybody will get a printout at the end of the exam. If you don’t get 100% on the exam, you will get these different codes of areas that you didn’t pass. Okay. And so you can come back to the ACS to figure out what areas in which you did not do so well in okay, this is useful, this is extremely useful if you didn’t pass the exam. If you didn’t get a 70%, you can take a look at that printout and figure out exactly which areas that you need to beef up your knowledge on. Okay, if you did pass, but didn’t get 100%, I still suggest coming back to the ACS and figuring out those areas that you maybe need to beef up your knowledge on. And it’s important this, this taking this exam is important too, to show that you know, the rules, you know, the regulations, you know how to be safe. But you also wanted to be aware of what maybe some of your weaknesses are in some areas that you need to just strengthen your knowledge in. Okay. So what this is, is these different codes are shows you exactly what part of the ACS that they’re talking about. Okay, so UAE means that it’s the ACS for the unmanned aircraft systems. So this is referring to the UAS, ACS, then you’ve got the area of operations. So this one right here is number one regulations. This is right here, number one, regulations. Then there is the task, operating rules, B task, operating rules, and then knowledge element, it’ll tell you the specific knowledge element of the ACS. So if we come down here a little bit more, let’s go let’s go down to operating rules it said it was K 10 is visual line of sight. Okay. So if I come down here to regulations, operating rules, k 10, visual line of sight Aircraft Operations. Alright, so that is how you read the ACS. And when you get your knowledge report, you can come back to the ACS and figure out exactly which areas you you need to beef up your knowledge on
