Test strategy
How to Use Part 107 Practice Tests Properly
✓ Reviewed against current FAA sources on October 22, 2026
In this guide
In short
Practice testing is among the most effective study techniques in the learning research, but only when the questions are unfamiliar and every miss is traced back to the source material. Repeating a bank you have already worked measures recall of those items rather than knowledge of the subject.
Practice questions do more for a knowledge test result than any other single activity. They are also the tool most often used in the way that produces the least benefit.
Why practice testing works
Retrieving an answer from memory strengthens the memory more than reading the same material again does. In a widely cited study, students who tested themselves remembered 56 percent of the material a week later, against 42 percent for students who reread it. Practice testing and distributed practice were rated the two most effective techniques in a major review of learning research.
The mistake that undoes it
The benefit comes from retrieval under uncertainty. Once you have worked a bank twice, you are no longer retrieving the answer from your knowledge of the subject. You are recognizing the item. Scores rise and understanding does not.
Two defenses: use a question source large enough that repetition is not the dominant effect, and hold back a set you have never seen for a readiness check near the end.
Trace every miss to its source
A wrong answer is information about a gap, and the gap is in a specific place. A good practice question tells you not only that you were wrong but why each option is right or wrong, and where in the source material the subject is taught. Reading that explanation and then reading the underlying rule is the step that converts a miss into knowledge.
Skipping it is why candidates can work thousands of questions and still fail.
Drill by weakness, not by volume
General practice tests mostly re-examine what you already know, because most of what you know is most of the test. Once you have identified weak areas, filter to those areas specifically. Twenty questions in the subject you keep missing is worth more than a hundred mixed questions.
Mind what the questions are not
The FAA keeps its active test questions confidential. No legitimate publisher has them, and any source claiming to reproduce real test questions is either mistaken or dishonest. Good practice questions are original items written to the same published knowledge areas, which is a different thing from a leaked bank and a better preparation.
Space the sessions
Several shorter sessions across two weeks beat the same total time in one sitting. The spacing effect is among the most robust findings in the field, and it costs nothing to apply.
What a good score actually means
Consistently above 85 percent on unfamiliar questions, with no single knowledge area dramatically behind the others, is a reasonable readiness signal. An 85 percent average concealing one area at 50 percent is not.
Sources: Roediger and Karpicke, 2006; Dunlosky, 2013; Remote Pilot ACS FAA-S-ACS-10B.