Ok perhaps my comments were a bit too provocative, I'm sorry, I woke up extra specially bitter and twisted (bad weather, no bookings, wife ran out of patience with my flying job idea, kid screaming...etc). I'll be more positive.
Black knat - regarding contact making, no it hadn't occured to me, maybe I'm at the wrong club, time to find a new job!
LH2 - is it just about being good enough? isn't it more about having the opportunity in the first instance then frequency, recency and quality ongoing training/checks - stop all that and surely any pilot would be behind the curve/not good enough, hence all the regulation.
Royboy20 - ignore my bitter ramblings (i'm sure you already have) and do the FI course. Course is great fun, teaching is great fun, the challenge of knocking a pilot out of all comers is a great challenge. It's not near London but I did my FI rating with On-Track Aviation based at Wellesbourne in Warwickshire. They are quite used to doing it bit by bit to suit the customers needs. e.g. while I was there an about-to-retire training captain was renewing his 30 year out of date FI rating and he came down from Scotland a few days at a time. EGBW is a nice little GA airfield, no commercial traffic, and loads of open airspace on the door step, which all makes for effective use of engine run time for each trip.
There, I feel better now.
