Contemporary of Shy's, and the same recollections - have not heard of any creamie Q-H-ones since first becoming aware of the job in the mid-70s. Closest I ever saw was in the late 80s when it seemed that you could only be a Chinook OCU QHI if you'd never served on Chinooks before... but they'd all flown some kind of rotary prior to arriving on 240.
I wish Lt Cooke well. If he managed as much stick-time as some crewmen I knew, he had probably already covered much of the work prior to BRNC and basic flying training. I'm not going to mention Dark Menace again, just in case an easily-offended ex-truckie is reading this thread
. For
aw ditor - my Dad was a creamie Sgt pilot instructor in 1942; his Senior Instructor told him the re-roling whilst still in Canada would probably save his life as most of his contemporaries went to Bomber Command, and he was right.