Figures and Charts
The Figure Is the Question.
So Ours Is Different Every Time.
Instrument panels, sectional excerpts, approach plates, performance graphs, loading plots and wind-component charts, drawn new for every session — plus real FAA charts where the test uses them.
Because the figure is generated rather than retrieved, there is no set to memorize and nothing to run out of.
The shape of the test
Most of the Difficulty on an FAA Test Is in Reading Something
Not in remembering a rule — in extracting the right number from a graph, a plate or a panel while the clock runs.
Ask a candidate which questions cost them time and you will get the same answer every time: the ones with a figure. A crosswind component off a chart. A takeoff distance interpolated between two pressure altitudes. A CG that lands just inside or just outside an envelope. An approach plate you have to read three ways to answer one question about it. The regulation questions are quick; the figure questions are where two hours stops being generous.
Which means the single most valuable thing a study product can do is put a lot of different figures in front of you. And the single most common thing a study product actually does is put the same figures in front of you, over and over, until you can answer them without reading them — a skill that transfers to nothing.
The generated set
What Gets Drawn Fresh
Each of these has parameters, and the parameters move.
The same underlying skill can therefore be asked in a hundred different ways, which is the difference between reading a figure and recognizing one.
Instruments and panels
An attitude indicator at any pitch and bank. A course deviation indicator at any deflection with any to-from sense. An altimeter at any setting, a heading indicator with any precession, a full six-pack in any consistent state — including the inconsistent ones, when the question is about a failure.
Sectional-style excerpts
An airspace stack around any airport, with the symbology that makes the question answerable: class boundaries and ceilings, terrain and obstructions, special-use areas, frequencies and field elevations. Ask the same airspace question about twenty different pieces of chart and it stops being a memory exercise.
Approach plates
Minimums by category and by approach type, missed-approach segments, step-downs, inoperative-component adjustments, and the difference between a decision altitude and a minimum descent altitude asked on a plate you have not seen before.
Performance graphs
Takeoff and landing distance, climb rate, cruise power settings, density altitude. Generated for arbitrary weights, temperatures, pressure altitudes and wind components, so interpolation is something you practice rather than something you get lucky on.
Weight-and-balance plots
Loading graphs and CG envelopes for arbitrary aircraft and arbitrary loads, including the ones that land just outside the envelope and the ones that go out of limits only after you burn the fuel.
Weather products
Station models, prognostic and surface charts, winds and temperatures aloft, and the coded reports and forecasts read the way a briefing presents them rather than the way a glossary lists them.
The rule change
What Changes on October 27, 2026
Stated plainly, without the drama it is usually given.
- What the FAA has said: from that date the instrument rating and Part 107 remote pilot knowledge tests include image questions drawn from current sectional, approach and enroute charts, rather than only from the fixed printed test supplement. The FAA has indicated other tests will follow.
- What that does not mean: the subjects are unchanged. Airspace is still airspace; an approach plate still reads the way it always read. Nobody has to learn a new discipline.
- What it does mean: a candidate who prepared by getting familiar with a specific set of supplement figures loses that familiarity as an advantage. What is left is whether you can read a chart you have not seen before.
- What it changes here: nothing about how we build. Generating a fresh figure every session was the design before this was announced, for a reason that has nothing to do with the announcement: memorized figures were never teaching anybody to read a chart.
An honest caveat: regulatory dates move, and details get clarified after they are published. Confirm the current requirements with the FAA or your instructor rather than with any marketing page, including this one. What we will commit to is the approach — new figures every session — which is correct whether that date holds or slips.
Public domain
And Real Charts, Where the Test Uses Real Charts
Generated figures are for building the skill.
When a question is about a genuine chart, a genuine chart is what you should be looking at.
FAA handbooks, the Airman Certification Standards, the published sample questions and the aeronautical charts themselves are works of the United States government and are in the public domain. That is not a loophole we are exploiting; it is the deliberate design of a system that wants pilots to have the material. It means we can put an actual sectional excerpt or an actual approach plate in front of you when the exercise calls for one, without licensing it from anybody and without reproducing anybody’s proprietary content.
It also means something about our question bank that is worth stating: our items are written from the standards, the handbooks and the regulations. They are not remembered test questions collected from candidates. That is a better legal posture, and it is the reason a figure change does not break us — a product assembled from a recalled pool is downstream of whatever the pool happened to contain.
About the Figures
If the figures are generated, are the answers right?
Are these the actual figures from the test supplement?
Will I still see enough of the real thing?
Does this work on a phone?
What about the weather charts and coded reports?
Practice Reading, Not Remembering
New figures every session, plus real charts where the test uses them. Included at $49/mo, launching Monday, February 8, 2027.
Join the Waitlist