Originally Posted by
Above The Clouds
Example, pilot purchases say a C182 from an owner, pilot buying the aircraft has only flown Pipers, owner of the C182 has 500 hours on type, no instructors around with C182 time, is it wiser to get the owner to do the checkout or an instructor with no experience on type to do a checkout ?
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It appears to me that the underlying assumption to the above paragraph is the facile and tired reduction of the issue into a binary choice
Flying instructor = automatically inexperienced and not competent to perform the checkout
500 hr on type PPL = automatically in all respects ready to give a comprehensive effective check out
While there are plenty of not very good instructors out there there are also plenty of 500 hr PPL's on type with marginal flying skills and an impressive collection of bad habits. There are also a discouragingly large number of pilots who are too cheap to pay for a good checkout even though a good instructor is available locally
My 02 cents
1) Regardless of how much experience you have a check out from an experienced instructor before flying a new type is a good idea. The extent of this checkout is obviously proportional to the amount, relevance and recency of your experience.
2) For almost every pilot, flying almost every type, in almost every place, it will be possible to obtain the services of a good instructor with relevant experience. This however may involve some research to find out who is out there and some extra costs to bring in someone who is not local. Whether you chose to do that is up to you, but to say there is nobody competent to teach you is not likely to be the case, you have simply chosen not to find them.