Three years ago I was involved in the TR course of a batch of the latest wunder kids straight out of flying college flying the latest wunder jet. They were all the latest students of the JAR CPL course in which the flying content had been reduced to about 150 hours from approx over two hundred, and the difference replaced with 50 hours in a 737 simulator, which also covered the CRM/MCC requirement.
They were all highly intelligent, highly motivated young men and women and by the end of the course could operate to the airline SOP, deal with multiple failures and hand fly the aircraft in IMC as well as any Pilot with thousands of hours.
During the course one of the interesting problems that emerged was after flying an immaculate ILS under IMC when they became visual at 200/300/500ft the fun would start. I never came across one who could stay on the centre line, on the glide path and fly approx at Vref, most of the deviations were so extreme that the outcome in the real aircraft would have been a spectacular fireball.
A lot of time was spent correcting what are basic flying skill errors. The last session on the course was an introduction to circuit work in preparation for the base training detail in the real aircraft. Again the sessions proved that if the circuit was standard, once they had been taught how to fly straight and level and control an approach visually, a reasonable standard could be reached, however the fun would start again when say extending downwind or flying a larger circuit.
Never under estimate the value of poleing an aerolpane around the sky, especially when one is not under the eagle eye of the instructor, some of the best lessons were learnt on my own or with a fellow cadet flying mutual. Also told to me by my first instructor 'Never under estimate the value of the the two lessons on a flying course that get glanced over, effect of controls part 1 and 2'.
As for the NDB I've just looked in me logbook, 14 in the last year, in some very odd places and still flown in almost exactly the same way I was taught at Perth nearly 30 years ago.
For this old guffer SC is pretty much spot on.