Time & Place?
My experience was mostly below 500ft....for the 1st 15yrs of my career I didnt have an autopilot. I was all hand flying.
Now Im in the airlines its entirely different!
Handing flying can in fact be a major error! You must pick your time & place....and you must be very careful not to overload the non-flying pilot, as he/she is working extra hard monitoring you and doing his/her normal duties. (The PNF may also be twidling HDG, ALT & IAS knobs for you FDs too!)
At major international airports hand flying is a threat.....
If for half a second you "hand flyers" think that following somee FD bars around the sky is "hand flying" you're in la-la land. My kids can do that!. There is no skill involved at all.
Be honest, how many of you are 'No Modes', 'No FDs', and flying totally on Raw Data....whilst you display your superior skills?
Its a sad fact that we are now system operators and that by and large the system is better at it than us.
'George' spares us capacity to deal with the myriad of other seen and hidden threats that exist in high density modern international airports.
Stick & Rudder skills are essential.....but theres a time and place to practice them and of course there is the sim.
Otherwise I suggest you hire a Piper Cub etc.......because following a FD is not even the slightest bit skillful or indeed clever.
eg: parallel ILS's, such as SFO...... is it truely a safe option to hand-fly the localiser intercept?
It may indeed be skillful but just one distraction from ATC or EICAS/ECAM and the holes in the 'swiss cheese' start lining up very very quickly.
All professional pilots will be aware of the swiss cheese analogy, but if youre new to this job or keen to learn about identifying and eliminating the hazards we face daily do a google search for "james reason", "systemic errors" or indeed "swiss cheese model".
Theres a very fine line between being a hero and a zero!