In my experience the tacho and airswitch on charter aeroplanes work just fine. You just don't use them as everything is done by clock times.
Yeah and you can reverse audit it all anyway. If people start cheating it isn't hard to get caught. Just comparing the MR against the logbook against the flight record against the fuel burn and you can pretty quickly see what's going on.
Things such as Driving an ag plane loader, being a refueller, flight clerk, baggage handler, passenger loader, winchman, hangar bitch, etc etc are all things that not only give you a bit of an insight into the industry, but also give you contacts within that industry.
Not sure about these days but I found it very difficult to get into these jobs when I was starting. Being a wannabe pilot is a big negative here and people rubbed me out just on that. It's even worse when you move up north and heaps of wannabe pilots are going for the same type of job. Lack of commitment to their job is one issue that they perceive. In that once you get a flying job you're outa there. Alot easier working in a pub/supermarket/restaurant and being a regular dude than trying to work in the industry, unless you are already qualified or transferring from a city position, that is.