93% on the FAA professional drone pilot exam

I very occasionally sell stock photography and stock video footage.  (That's no way to get rich.)  Recently, it seemed that more and more of the stock video that's selling was taken by drones.  So I wondered if I might want to try my hand at that.  But, on investigation, I found that it's illegal to take aerial drone photography and videography for business purposes unless you have an FAA license as a "remote pilot" -- a drone pilot.  Well, I don't own a drone -- I've never even touched a drone -- but I thought I might see what's involved in actually getting a license.

Initially, I was going to get a license and then move ahead with getting a drone.  But as I contemplated the cost vs. how much I'd likely use the drone, I became less sure that I would follow through.  However, I thought it would be a great test of the effectiveness of the Dementia Toolkit strategies we discussed in Beating the Dementia Monster to simply pay $160, take the test, and see how I do.  And, who knows, maybe I will get a drone some day.  I told my neurologist that I was going to do this, and she was quite enthusiastic about the exercise.

So, three weeks and six jillion hours of YouTube exam prep videos later, I sat for the exam.  That was today, and I scored 93%.  The test center was in Walla Walla, which is a little more than an hour away.  Amy went with me and waited outside while I took the test.  It didn't help that I had terrible insomnia, both the night before and the night before that.  It did help that Amy's nephew, Eddie, is studying to be an airline pilot at Central Washington University, and he was able to coach me during exam prep on questions I had on air space and elevations.

In watching the exam prep videos, I saw a number of people on YouTube discussing their experiences and test scores.  The highest score I saw anyone report was 93%.  (The proctor for today's test said that she'd seen two 100% over her time there.)  You can pay one, two, or three hundred dollars for on-line exam prep courses, but I decided to do it by only learning from free resources I found on line and those provided by the FAA.  I doubt that I would have scored higher if I'd taken a course.

So was the purpose of the test to see if you know how to fly a drone?  Hardly.  The test consisted of 60 questions on reading the FAA's "sectional charts," understanding Class A, B, C, D, and E air space, decoding the FAA's cryptic weather reports, understanding aircraft traffic patterns around airports, understanding what pilots and towers are saying to each other on the radio, understanding such aeronautical concepts as "stall," knowing a whole raft of FAA regulations (some of which seem irrelevant to drones), understanding the role of human factors in accidents, etc.  (As it happens, much of my career before retirement involved applying human performance concepts in investigating and preventing accidents.) 

I feel pretty good about this.  When I recall the problems I had remembering my zip code and my phone number back in 2015-16, how I couldn't drive, how I couldn't even cross the street safely, I have to say that I've come a long way!