genuine question, maybe a dumb one. i passed my part 107 about three months ago and im realizing i retained maybe 40% of what i studied at best. like i know the airspace basics well enough to fly legally but some of the deeper aeronautical knowledge stuff, the density altitude calculations and reading weather observations, i kind of just crammed it and moved on.

i fly mostly real estate and some event work, nothing crazy. so far i havent needed to like whip out a sectional chart in the field or calculate anything on the fly. wondering if people who do more serious commercial work actually use this knowledge day to day or if the cert is mostly just the legal checkbox and you learn the real practical stuff separately

honestly depends on what you're doing. for real estate and events yeah you're probably never going to need the density altitude stuff in any serious way, you're flying low and slow in relatively benign conditions most of the time. but i do some work near controlled airspace and around airports and the airspace knowledge comes up constantly, i'm checking charts before almost every job and occasionally calling up approach for authorizations even with LAANC just to double check.

the weather stuff does matter more than people think though even for low stakes work. i had a client job last summer where i should have known better just from reading the METAR before i left the house but i drove 45 minutes out and the visibility was garbage. cost me a half day. so yeah some of it is just a checkbox but dont let the practical stuff completely atrophy

lol i felt this. passed in january and some of the radio communications stuff i studied i have literally never thought about since. i think the test is designed more around manned aviation safety princples than actual drone operations which is a whole seperate conversation