3 hours? At Cabair I had a 10 minute briefing, 10 minutes of planning time (more was available; I was told I could write down a script for the entire thing, though I chose not to), and about 20 minutes for the test. After reading the 3 hours comment I expected to see others chime in with how this seemed a long time, so perhaps mine was the unusual one.
Also, I'm not sure I agree with the suggestion that good RT has anything to do with currency. Much of the bad RT I've heard seems to spring from bad habbits, repeated so often that they don't imagine it could be wrong. 1 hour every 2 years with an instructor isn't enough to retrain it out of a frequent flyer's memory and there seems to be no other mechanism for correcting someone.