The Oral Exam takes place before the flying portion of the Private Pilot test and it's apparently become quite involved and apparently gotten tougher since the ACS was adopted.
So a fellow student pilot Peter, who is at pretty much the same stage I'm in (he started just before I did) got together last night and over pizza studied by quizzing each other on topics needed for the oral exam.
We quizzed each other on the various markings on the sectional and airspace, as apparently if you get more than two answers wrong on that portion of the oral, the entire exam is discontinued, and every single marking on the sectional is fair game and you can't consult the sectional legend or the FAA's helpful list of sectional markings.
So we finished and felt pretty good about that, and then went on to cover privileges and limitations and the documents and items needed to fly legally.
There's a lot of stuff required in the oral that in real life you will either never use while flying or will simply look up in the FAR/AIM or other reference material if you actually need it. Yes, some stuff should be memorized but there's an awful lot of chaff to lock into your brain along with the wheat. It's a "You're not a Jedi yet so we can make you jump through these hoops" kinda test. That it's closed book test so you have to memorize some pretty arcane stuff is annoying, but the thinking seems to be they want to make sure you're willing to put the time in and be serious about learning the stuff to demonstrate you're serious enough about it before they let you go off all certificated.
That was a good study session and we'll do it again as we get prepped for the flying test.
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