After 2 years, 64 lessons, a bunch of exams, and a cross-country solo, I passed my Skill Test today. This is the big hurdle before getting a license – it’s pretty much the equivalent of the driving test.
You take an examiner on a flight, and they ask you to navigate and perform various manoeuvres: stalls, recovery from a spiral dive, simulated forced landings, tracking to a VOR, various types of non-simulated landing, and more. It’s quite the day!
I have one more minor box to tick: you need a specific license to broadcast on radio frequencies from a plane, and I need to do a ground-based exam for that. I’ll hopefully get that in the next couple of weeks. And then I’ll have my full license!