get the piggyback FAA from my CAA. Add to that my conversion from my Swedish JAA to the British one and we're talking even more.
No need for a UK CAA-issued PPL as an intermediate step. The FAA accepts any ICAO PPL for the issue of an FAA "piggyback" PPL. It's just that the UK CAA and the Australian CAA have strict rules on privacy, so if the FAA calls them to verify the authenticity of your license, they refuse to give the FAA the relevant info. So in both the UK and the Australian situation you've got to contact the CAA beforehand, asking/authorizing them to release your information. But apparently this is not the case for other CAAs (at least not mentioned on the FAA website) so for those CAAs the process is much less painful, and thus possibly much quicker as well.
On top of that I need a comm level 6 endorsement and I only think I have 5 at the moment to get the piggyback.
What I understand is that the US is really practical about ICAO LPE requirements. The FAA has a long-standing requirement that anyone who wants to hold an FAA PPL (or higher) has to speak English to a certain degree, and the FAA has deemed this requirement to be more strict than LPE level 4. So every time you go for a BFR (which happens every two years, and is a requirement to activate your piggyback FAA PPL in any case) the instructor will implicitly "test" your English skills, and won't sign you off if your skills are below par. And if you're up to par, you automatically get ICAO LPE 4, which is valid for the next three years. And of course, your next BFR is earlier than that. Simple.
In order to own an N-reg you need to either be a US Citizen, have a green card or have a US corporation.
A US trust is your answer, and Delaware seems to have the best terms for this kind of thing, as others have said. If you did not get a PM from IO540 already, ask him. He's got a reference to a good website explaining all of this.
Really look forward to all the TSA clearance paperwork and wait and ground exams and orals and...
If you're not getting any significant training, but you're just going to do some brush-up and then a flight exam, you might be exempted from TSA clearance. I seem to recall that things like proficiency checks etc. are specifically exempted in the regulations, but brush-up training would probably be one of those gray areas. Might be worth checking that out, or actually writing the TSA about it. After all, the TSA requirements were put in place for those types of training that significantly enhance your ability to fly an airliner into a building (almost literal wording of the TSA act). So they identified a few training areas for which TSA clearance is required: initial training (PPL), multi-engine (ME), instrument flight (IR) and certain type ratings. All the rest is implicitly exempted from TSA clearance requirements, and so are things like BFRs. Check out their web page for details.
In any case, getting the TSA clearance, once you look at what's really involved, isn't all that hard. It will take about an hour to get through the initial submission of your details through their website, and once you arrive in the US the total fingerprinting thing may take about two hours, including the drive to the police station and back. And you can begin training for the PPL as soon as the TSA acknowledges receipt of your fingerprints. Which, with electronic fingerprinting equipment, is probably a few hours, maybe a day at most.
Also, as far as I know, in the US "ground exams" and "oral exams" should not be a plural. It's one exam covering everything.
The resulting standalone FAA PPL will be yours for ever. To keep it current, you just need an FAA Class 3 medical and a BFR every 2 years.
...and you need to keep Oklahoma (FAA HQ) informed about a change of address.
