ASA Test Prep Board

I used this book to help me prepare to teach a Part 107 ground school class. The class that I taught was an intensive 20-hour FAA knowledge test prep class. This was a useful resource for students to find things all in one place. I'm generally a big fan of the ASA test prep books. This one is also quite good. The five free practice tests that are included were very useful to my students.

I don't love how the information is organized in this book, but I could be biased because I teach Part 61 ground school and prefer how the topics are introduced in the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. (That said, I haven't found any book that covers each individual topic to the level and in the same order that I have found through experience to be most useful in actually teaching the information in a classroom setting.)

While not completely related to this book: What I don't love even more is how much nearly irrelevant stuff the FAA requires Part 107 operators to know, and how few resources they offer on understanding very important topics in the lens of quadcopter operation. For example: they emphasize stall = exceeding critical angle of attack, which I agree is one of the single-most important thing that fixed wing pilots can learn. However, I don't see how it is relevant to people who will only be operating quadcopter sUAS. This makes it difficult to bridge the gap from published information (PHAK) to useful knowledge. Huge emphasis on things like calculating pressure and density altitude also seems excessive for people who will only be operating these systems 400' above the ground. At times I struggled to make this information seem relevant to my students, which is the only way you will get people to truly learn any topic.… (more)

I found this book to be of very limited usefulness, which makes me glad that I borrowed it from the library and saved myself some money.

There are many sample test questions of the type that you may see on the FAA written exam. However, many of the test questions have accompanying figures, which are missing from this book. That makes many of the sample questions that this book contains completely useless. You can't determine the distance between two airports on a sectional chart without having a copy of the sectional chart. You can't determine Vne if there isn't an airspeed indicator pictured. You get the idea. (Note: there is an Airman Knowledge Testing Supplement that you need to accompany this book, otherwise the test prep books are totally useless. Thankfully, you can find PDF copies on the FAA website, as they are official FAA handbooks.)

The book also contains all private pilot questions, which includes airplane, glider, balloon, rotorcraft, etc. There are acronyms above each of the questions to help guide your study, but I found that when I was in "super focused study mode" I would gloss over that and get to questions that made no sense, and it would interrupt the flow of my study.

I recommend taking the money that you would have spent on this book and instead purchasing an app like the one that Dauntless Aviation makes, which gives you access to questions which (a) are more specific to the certificate that you are going for (b) actually contain the figures along with the questions and (c) provides a lot more feedback on all of the questions.… (more)