I totally agree with the experience part. loads of hours flying circuits or a to b in good weather is not going to help you say doing a precautionary or emergency landing in a gale in a confined area or coping with severe turbulence in the hills etc etc When it comes say to handling for instance, a few hours of crop spraying or sling load will benefit you more than thousands of hrs S & Level. These guys are out there, jellycopter being one of them, and i for one will be doing more brushing up on my autos, tail into wind slope landings, hyd failures etc etc at the end of the day they are ALL dirt cheap @ £4 -500 a day. ( you pay more for a dealer mechanic to service your car per hr !!) I think the annual check rides should be much more testing with some really testing moments thrown in for the F E to see the reaction because we can all fly ok when in our comfort zone , so who is ever going to fail their test ??