Thanks to everyone for answering my questions.
Now even though most of my flights are in the 777, I do still sometimes fly general aviation airplanes. A few years ago, I was flying on IVAO (another virtual platform simulating ATC mostly in Europe) but left because basically there are too many kids there. IVAO gives you the possibility to take exams like you would do in real life for the PPL forcing you to fly a light airplane.
The examiner will ask theoretical questions about
- Basics of air law: instrument and visual flight rules, weather requirements for VFR flights, airspace classes and structure, types of controlled airspaces, ATC units and positions, transponder codes,
- Chart reading
- VFR procedures: VFR charts interpretation and VFR circuit,
- Navigation: VFR routes, basic use of radio navigation aids, semi-circular rules, transition altitude and transition level,
- Meteorology: METAR and TAF interpretation,
- Flight instruments and aircraft knowledge: principles of altimetry, altimeter settings, airspeeds, basic flight instruments, aircraft characteristics.
During the flight, the examiner will also ask you to navigate between radials and VORs/NDB, fly traffic patterns, VFR entry points, touch and goes, check your VFR phraseology, etc and make sure you're doing it correctly.
Even though it's not near a real PPL exam, it really gives you the basics about VFR and what flying a light airplane looks like. I passed this exam 3 years ago and didn't stop flying light airplanes from time to time since then.
Later I passed another similar exam basically giving you your instrument qualification in a light aircraft.
So it's not like I didn't touch a light aircraft at all. I passed these exams on X-plane because I heard from real pilots that this sim was well-simulating flight characteristics of real airplanes. FS2020 wasn't released at this time but I am definitely planning on buying it and flying more often light airplanes on the sim. I'll take your advice into account and not mix jets with lights but I don't think I could stop flying the 777 entirely though. I believe it's possible to do both at the same time
