Over talk: Thanks for the links...
Cyclic monkey: far too much time on yer hands man...
Glad to see this thread is still alive and kicking SH*T. ;-)
If I can add my 2¢ to these last posts:
As far as my commercial flying for no remuneration goes, I didn't take the time to dicker about details such as workman's comp and such when the ops manager offered me the stick time (call it intuition). I do however have very good private health and disability insurance I contracted in my previous "life" (that I could never get now as a pilot). My understanding is that the operator had me added to their liability insurance though (now why would they do that ? ;-)...
Low-time instructors: The way this school works is they have two class 1 instructors and one class 2 instructor (all high-timers). These guys do endorsements, recurrent training, PPC/VPC, etc for regular pilots. They also do most emergency training, solo prep and pre-test stuff with student pilots and mentor the low-time instructors. In my case, I was my instructor's first student. He was 21 and had about 450 Hrs (300 PIC) and was a fresh class 4. I think he was more nervous than me on our first flight. I had a great time with him. He was competent, eager and enthusiastic. Others on the instructor program never get to a point where they have any students because they don't have what it takes to teach. The school just doesn't let 'em continue that route and finds other ways to bring them along until they can fly commercially. My first instructor now flys AS350s up north...
Some people are born to teach. I think a mix of experienced and inexpreienced instructors is fine, as long as they work in a safe and structured environment.
Although I have several years of instruction experience under my belt (military, workplace, sports and community college), I didn't take the instructor path for a couple of reasons: For one, I'm not comfortable teaching something unless I've already mastered it as close to perfection as possible and I didn't see that as being likely in 200-300 hours. And furthermore, I want to fly the damn helicopter, not watch someone else do it !