What should a Part 107 exam simulator actually do?

Every Part 107 product offers “practice tests.” The phrase is doing four different jobs, and a tool can be genuinely good at one while being useless at another. Judging all four by the size of the question bank is the most common mistake a buyer makes, and the most common one a vendor encourages.

The four things a “practice test” can be

A drill teaches. It presents a question, takes an answer, and explains immediately — ideally why each wrong option is wrong, not only why the right one is right. Drills are where learning happens. They should be organised by topic so a weak area can be worked on its own.

A simulation rehearses. It reproduces the sitting: for the Unmanned Aircraft General test that is 60 scored questions plus 5 unscored validation items, 120 minutes, three choices per question, and no feedback until you submit. Its job is to make the real room feel familiar and to measure performance under the clock. A simulation that gives feedback as you go, or has four choices, or no timer, is a drill wearing a costume.

A question bank is the material both draw on. Its quality has nothing to do with its size and everything to do with three properties: whether each answer cites the FAA source it comes from, whether it is weighted to the blueprint the exam uses today, and whether it can be gamed by shape.

A readiness measure tells you whether to book. It is not a score on a single test. It is a per-topic accuracy, recency-weighted so last month’s mistakes count less than yesterday’s, with the sample size shown beside every number, and a stated gate you either clear or do not.

What a simulation specifically should do

Match the format exactly. 60 scored, 5 unscored, 120 minutes, 70 percent to pass. The five validation items are on page four of PSI’s bulletin and almost nobody mentions them; a simulation that includes them is one that has read the document.

Draw to the current blueprint. Regulations is 48 percent of the exam, Operations 25, Airspace 20, Weather 5, Loading and Performance 2 — from PSI’s Applicant Information Bulletin, effective 29 September 2025. A simulation drawing to the retired table in FAA-S-ACS-10B rehearses the wrong exam.

Not repeat. Each simulation should exclude questions the student has already been shown, and the vendor should be able to say how many clean simulations the bank supports. It is arithmetic: the Regulations draw is 29 per sim, so a bank of 100 Regulations items supports three. “Unlimited” describes the button.

Report per topic. Not “77 percent” but 20 of 29 in Regulations, 8 of 12 in Airspace. The overall figure hides the topic that will fail the exam.

What it should not do

It should not tell you that you will pass. No practice tool has the data to correlate its own scores with FAA outcomes, and one that claims to is selling a number. What a simulation can honestly say is that you cleared a stated gate, or which topic kept you from it.

How we do it

Our sims are the real format, weighted to the bulletin, and non-repeating across 5 consecutive sims — a number derived from the bank at build time rather than typed into a page. The readiness gate is 85 percent on every topic plus two timed sims at 80 percent or better, and a topic with fewer than five answers is greyed rather than scored. We make no claim that clearing the gate predicts passing.

The full fifteen-question standard →