Well, I think I have GREAT stick and rudder skills, yet at my last line check we had a deferred autopilot (INOP). Go figure! Well, the leg I flew was from MSN to ORD. No problem right..ugh..no. We took off out of MSN and more or less were vectored straight to ORD. The problem I had was, we, like most airlines, require you to back up all your approaches with an ILS, even though you are VMC. So, on the short flight to ORD, we were still getting landing performance data, running checklists, calling ops, calling the FA's, calling the folks in back, etc and then given a pretty lousy vector for the visual with a several thousand foot descent to an intercept altitude. The whole time instead of just flying the airplane, which is no problem, I had to divert a fair amount of attention to my automation just so all the pretty lines on the screen were all in a row. Well, during all this my non-flying pilot didn't hear me ask to switch my nav freq from stand-by to active. All my pretty needles were pointed off into la la land (our SOP has the non-flying pilot tune the freqs). Of course, I was not following needles, cause...I am a RV pilot and the visual approach in VMC should be flying 101. But. the check airman goes ballistic. "WTF...you really F that up..." Classy guy!. Uh. no.. Still. I transferred controls, quickly realized that he was po'd about my pretty needles, fixed that, re-assumed the controls and finished my landing. Moral of the story...most airlines require heavy use of automation. Most pilots I know, fly just fine without it. There are some that need to go and get some tailwheel time to get back in full stick and rudder mode but you seldom get to just "fly" the plane. You are always required to fiddle with the automation. By the way, my de-brief with the check airmen went pretty well. He admitted that I flew well, just need to make sure that I make sure my radios are tuned properly prior to going to "green needles". I received that correction and am certainly more conscious of it now. I did not blow through the localizer and there was no violations. I passed the line-check.