Half way through a PPL and still unsure of some aspects of the pre-flight.
(she's a real steep learning curve initially).
Yeah, pretty normal that the first 2 or so done by the instructor telling you whats what.
Next 2-4 done by yourself with the instructor watching over the shoulder to correct/embellish things.
Then quite often you're supposed to know everything down pat!
The reality is that there's so much info at the start (what with trying to fly the thing plus everything else
) that you forget a lot of the things that were crammed in the begining & end up doing the same things the wrong/incomplete way without some correction.
Every now & then your instructor should demo a pre-flight. At times while you're doing a pre-flight the instructor should point at a thing & go in depth on that 1 thing (eg: whats special about the tail rotor flapping hinge? slowly working over the whole machine). As with the engineer bit below, your instructor should have a good idea and point out to you the bits you really keep an eye on and get nervous about ( weakpoints etc....).
If possible grab a different instructor and asks how he does a pre-flight (quite amazing what a different point of veiw reveals).
Yes!! as per Tees grab an engineer and find out all the bits they love to look at ( more relevant, what bits should you really keep a good eye on ).
Yes be paranoid, don't let someone else's laziness be your lack of knowledge be the death of you.
Read everything, ask questions, get demo's, cross check, more questions then do it properly.