"Falky foo" wrote in message
. ..
All the people I've talked to in San Diego want $70 to sign it, since I
don't have someone I'm taking regular lessons from at this time.

Oh ok, that's different.

One alternative that you might (or might not) want to consider, if you're
comfortable just learning the ground material from a textbook, is to do that
and then take a practice test (to verify that you can pass comfortably), but
defer the real test until you've started flight training. That way you avoid
both the expense of the online ground course and of the $70 signoff, but you
still get all the ground study out of the way in advance--all that remains
is to take the official test, which at that point will be just a formality.

--Gary