SS - you are taking my comment out of context. Yes, airline pilots have a line check every so often but they do it on a representative cockpit, not in some GA spamcan in which few people would fly IFR for real, partial panel and with the moving map GPS switched off for the very bits where you want the best situational awareness... Airline pilots also have to fly (subj. to wx above company minima) else they get the sack; a private pilot will generally pick another day. I take my flying pretty seriously but cannot help reflecting on how irrelevant the training practices are to reality.
in turbulence with no autopilot available,
A private pilot would not depart IFR with no AP. One can do the flight but the cockpit workload is high, so why go? I've flown to Greece and back manually (due to AP failure on the way) but would not depart with a duff AP. I know the Trislander crews were/are flying manually - hard work.