hello drone pilots my name is alan and i'm here today with uav coach and drone pilot ground school to talk about the faa's drone certification exam specifically to walk through five of the most challenging faa airspace questions now why am i shooting this video well for those of you thinking about the drone certification process this video will show you what some of the harder airspace questions look like but also our methodology of teaching these concepts in our self-paced test prep course over at dronepilotgroundschool.com and by choosing these super hard questions i'm not trying to scare you away the reality is that most folks going through this process have no traditional aviation or drone experience and we've designed our test prep lessons in a way that is very much for beginners most of what you're being tested on is relatively straightforward but we always like to be upfront with folks about what kind of trickery the faa has up their sleeve when writing test questions so i'm shooting this video for those of you thinking about going through this process i'm also shooting this video for those of you who have already passed your faa exam let's see what you still remember mr mrs smartypants as i go through each of these questions pause the video see if you can work to get the right answer to each question as we go through it okay i'm gonna get behind the computer and share my screen and we'll jump right in [Music] all right folks i am behind the computer and before i get into this first question i just wanted to acknowledge what we're looking at we're looking at what's called a sectional chart and during your faa exam you'll be given a test supplement it's a it's a book and it's about 100 pages it's filled with maps like this as well as a lot of other really interesting information and many of the questions in the faa's database of test questions map specifically to one of these charts and in this case we've got five questions we're going through in this video we're going to be looking at three of the charts so figure 20 figure 25 and i believe figure 78 so what i'm going to do is i'm going to zoom in to make it a little bit easier to see there's a lot going on in these charts and let's just hop into question one so refer to figure 20 area 1 and area 1 is going to be this red circle here we can see down here is area 3 up here is area 6. so let's zoom into area 1. you're hired to inspect a group of structures that are under construction nine statute miles south of norfolk international airport what's the highest you're allowed to fly if inspecting the topmost part of the tower so there's a this is a multi-faceted question the first thing we have to do is to find norfolk international airport and this icon right here represents uh the middle of the airport and um in this case it's pretty easy we've got a class charlie airport there there's so much to teach here i think in the scope of this youtube video i'm just gonna focus on the specific question but if you're confused about any of this stuff just know that there you're learning a lot more as you're going through this test prep process and again we are looking at the most challenging questions that aren't going to show up until you're you know two-thirds of the way or three-fourths of the way through our course anyway so we found the airport icon and we've got to go nine statute miles south how do we know how far statute miles are well the fa gives us a nice little reference right here we're going to look at this middle row and that is about 10 statute miles so let's eyeball it let's go down about nine statute miles so somewhere around here we are looking for a group of structures that are under construction now this group icon here this is a group icon this is a single icon a single pyramid and this kind of double pyramid so group of structures would be this icon and under construction you see is right underneath the icon so we're looking at these at this group of obstructions now correctly identifying towers heights under construction all the stuff that i've just gone over it's challenging it can be confusing due to the amount of information printed on some of the charts and the placement of information doesn't always appear in the same exact way relative to the the different icons so i just want to acknowledge that when you're going through a course like ours you're going through dozens and dozens of these practice questions you're going to get a much better feel for that so we've identified the towers how high are we allowed to fly if inspecting the topmost part of the tower so the first thing to understand is these two numbers here they represent the topmost part of of the tower and when i say tower we're talking about a group of obstructions so let's you know maybe there's two buildings or three buildings or four utility towers or something but the top like the highest one the topmost part of that is going to be 470 feet msl or mean sea level or 453 feet agl or above ground level so both of these altitudes represent the highest point of this group of structures we're being asked how high are we allowed to fly now you might think to yourself we're only allowed to fly up to the tallest part of the tower maybe only up to 400 feet because under the part 107 regulations drone pilots can only fly up to 400 feet agl however this this question is tricky because it's addressing a nuance of this max altitude rule if you are within 400 feet of a tower or obstruction like what we're talking about you can even fly up to 400 feet over the topmost part of that tower for for inspection purposes so we're taking these altitudes and we're adding 400 feet and that's the highest that we're allowed to fly under the part 107 regulations so there could actually be two correct answers here could be 470 feet msl plus 400 feet or 870 feet msl could be a correct answer or 453 feet agl plus 400 feet or 853 feet agl and the correct answer choice is b 853 feet agl so a little tricky again a multi-faceted question where you have to number one kind of find the tower uh and you'll find the airport and then find the towers we have to go back to the question re-read it a couple of times to make sure we're really understanding is it is it a single tower they're looking for a group of obstructions uh we know they're under construction so it's going to be this one so anyways a very classic classically difficult tricky airspace question um let's look at question number two um we are looking at figure 25. um this is uh by far the most challenging uh figure in in all the land in all of the and all the figures um so i always pay special tribute to figure 25 when i'm going through it in our in our course because it's just a doozy so the first thing i'm going to do we're looking at it right side up i'm going to rotate it so we're able to read it here and i'm going to zoom in a little bit um question two refer to figure 25 area three so where is area three okay it's down here let's zoom in a little bit just to make our eyes give our eyes uh an advantage here and zoom a little bit more refer to figure 25 area three if dallas executive or rbd tower is not in operation which frequency should be used as a common traffic advisory frequency or ctaf to monitor airport traffic the first thing we need to do folks is to find dallas executive or rbd airport and it looks like we've got the text here dallas executive rbd and all of this information here is for this airport and it refers to this icon right here so what is the ctaf frequency what is what does the faa mean when they say ctaf it's available at busier airports and it's used by manned aircraft pilots so not by drone pilots but by manned aircraft pilots to self-announce their location as they arrive or depart the airport when the tower is not operational drone pilots can carry a radio and tune into the ctaf frequency you can hear some of this chatter to to kind of understand what's what's going on uh with with manned aviation um but i just wanted to set a little bit of context around a lot of the radio frequencies and a lot of the airspace stuff that we're learning as we're going through this process the infrastructure's set up for manned aircraft pilots but because we are drone pilots we have to learn to integrate into the existing national airspace system we're being asked to learn a lot of this stuff so when we look at the three answer choices they map to these three frequencies here one two seven dot two five one dot and 122.95 so what frequency is the correct answer the good news is that in that test supplement book i was telling you about one of the first few pages is a chart legend and it shows you a lot of helpful information to where you don't have to memorize all of the info in in something like this so when the tower is closed a pilot's going to tune into the ctaf so we're looking for the ctaf frequency and it's just a general rule of thumb that anytime you see a c icon like this the frequency to the left of that icon is the c tap frequency in this case it's also the control tower frequency but it's also the c tap frequency so the the correct answer is one two seven dot two five and i know i'm skipping through a ton of like explanations and and you know what is control tower frequency what is addis frequency um but but in the spirit of uh time and trying to stay somewhat focused i will uh continue on to the next question but just trying to give you a representation of the kinds of things you're going to be uh learning as you're going through this process question three also refer to figure 25 area eight uh so we're in the same spot here what airspace would you be operating in if flying at the maximum allowable altitude while inspecting the towers nine statute miles southwest of dallas executive airport awesome so we're actually looking at the same airport here so we're gonna start at the icon here we're gonna go nine statute miles southwest you can look at my mouse and we're probably looking at these icons right here and how do we know how tall these icons are well we see um we see two five four nine and we see one seven three one these are the closest altitude numbers uh to to this uh icon uh the towers the towers icon okay so the question here is again asking us about maximum allowable altitude and first let's determine what that altitude is and then we kind of figure out what airspace are we in well the maximum allowable altitude is going to be this 2549 msl plus 400 feet or 2949 msl it could also be if we're an agl again it could be 1731 feet agl plus 400 so 2131 feet agl so we've got the msl height and the agl height so that's what the maximum allowable altitude is now the question is are we in controlled airspace uh and what what what airspace class are we in uh there's no class d um these these blue dotted dashed lines here are class d there's no class d right here but we can see this um this blue class b and we can see that there's a there's a fraction here that says 110 over 30 and what that means that in this closed off part of the the blue class b airspace that class b starts at 3000 feet msl and it goes up to 11 000 feet msl so it starts at 3000 feet msl but we're at remember we're at 29 49 feet msl if we're flying at that maximum allowable altitude so we're not quite in class b so class b is not going to be the right answer um and remember if we're coming up from the surface unless it's otherwise marked you have class g uncontrolled airspace going up to either 700 feet agl or 1200 feet agl so then you have class e control airspace so um again there's a lot of nuances here um if for those of you who have gone through the the test threat process passed your fa exam i'm curious if you remember this question it may have shown up on your test but the correct answer is class e so one way to think about it is that we're starting at the ground level we go up with class g at the ground level goes up to either 700 feet or 1200 feet it doesn't really matter if we zoom out it's actually 700 feet because this whole area is enveloped in this thick magenta fuzzy circle but it doesn't really matter for this question and it's going to be class e up to 3000 feet msl when it changes over to class b so if we are flying at the maximum plowable altitude over this group of towers we are going to be in class e and if we fly a little bit higher uh we would be in class b cool but we wouldn't actually be allowed to fly higher unless we had an additional like special waiver for that so again very tricky question um i hope this is helpful i hope this gives you a sense of how we teach this stuff um let's go to question four this will be a little bit easier um so question four refer to figure 78 and you can see there's no areas on this figure this question was actually on my exam and i really struggled or some variation this question was on my exam on this chart and i struggled to find the specific airport or city that the question referenced i actually spent like three or four minutes looking for it so i'm going to cheat i'm going to show you where it is but we are trying to identify the airspace over onawa airport k36 so where is onawa it's actually right here i'm going to zoom in i'm going to scroll down and look right at it oh nawa so identify the airspace over onawa airport if you're a drone pilot could you fly around here this airport sits in class g airspace so uncontrolled class g airspace the thing to remember in this question um while the airport sits in class gear space how high does that class g airspace go up to when does it turn into class e airspace unless it's otherwise marked it's going to turn into class e at 1200 feet agl so there's no class of air space being indicated around this airport so we're in class g so the correct answer is is class g now the challenge is that uh all three answers have class g so this is kind of a definition style question we just have to know the definition of class g and um in this case it's going to start at the service and go up to 1200 feet and then it's class e from 1200 feet up to but not including 18 000 feet msl so um you know in in these thick magenta fuzzy areas this is class e transition so if uh if o naught was here like where this 2 4 is then it would be class g up to 700 feet agl and then it changes to class e so that's just kind of a definition of the airspace and the stuff you'll have to work your way through so that's uh that's question four a little simpler than the last one but still we have to identify where the airport icon is and situationally what's going on in this class g airspace versus this class g airspace if we're flying um you know a drone a few feet off the ground there's a difference between flying here and flying here when we look at the definition of you know does class g when does it stop does it stop at 700 feet does it stop at 1200 feet when does class e start so this idea of airspace classes stacking on top of each other can be confusing we have a lot of visuals we have a lot of like motion graphics and stuff in our course that help better better explain okay question five we are back to our beloved uh figure 25 and we're looking at area four so let me zoom out a little bit where is area four over here okay let's move over here see if i can zoom in once more there we go refer to figure 25 area 4. what is the floor of class b airspace at fort worth alliance or afw airport all right first let's find fort worth alliance fort worth alliance right here afw and all this information here we can see the control tower frequency to add us frequency the length of the runway this is the airport icon and we can see this blue demarcation this blue bold line that's class b airspace line so this airport sits in this part of the class b airspace so what's the floor of that class b airspace in this closed off part of class b airspace when we look uh we have to actually go down down down down we can look down here this 110 over 40. so this fraction here represents like in this closed off part of class b airspace and again we're looking at this right here so that 110 over 40 the floor is going to be 400 feet and the ceiling is going to be 11 000 feet msl so the correct answer is 4000 feet msl it's just really learning how to identify uh the fractions um and again figure 25 makes this super challenging a lot of the other questions are a lot easier uh than than this but that's why the floor of class b uh is in this case 4000 feet msl because of what that fraction uh says here you can see it's six thousand feet here you can see it's three thousand feet um here is two thousand feet so you know you move away further away from the airport the floor of class b rises it's like an upside down wedding cake that's another way to visualize an airport like this all right folks i'm going to hop back out from behind the computer okay i hope that wasn't too painful if you have any questions about these explanations or about the faa certification process let us know in the comments below blue skies and safe flying out there [Music]