Another less expensive and time consuming way to maintain, or attain, hand flying skills is hand fly the airplane part of the time. I know this is unheard of in this generation because the autopilot can never be shut off without a really good reason per some opspecs.
Agree. But for various reasons there are a breed of pilots who find monitoring the automatics, rather than practicing manual flying, is money for old rope. In otherwise they simply cannot be bothered to fly manually in IMC even though conditions might be entirely appropriate for the practice. Other pilots might be perfectly happy to switch off the automatics and pole their aircraft but are prevented by the captain who becomes immediately apprehensive if the FD is switched off. That situation will not change. So much depends on the individual personality and dare I say his love or otherwise of flying.