Actually, two MEIs got busted for doing just this a few years ago. They bought
an Apache and flew x-countries @ 1.3 * tach time switching seats every leg.
The guy in the left seat wore a hood. All seemingly perfectly legal.

Every psuedo judge thought that this was illegal.


These stories get better and better as time passes. The MEIs were not
quite the angles you might be implying they were. The FAA questioned
their log books because of some disagreements between the two logs. In
fact, I think the FAA might have first gotten involved because one of
them claimed time in a twin before the Apache that he never had access
to. In anycase, the NTSB (after appeal) asked how they come up with
their time. They said it was from the hobbs. However, when the judge
looked at the engine logs he found that it was a lot more than the
tach. The pilots told the judge that the hobbs must have been broken.
The hobbs was tested by and A&P and found to run fast, but not fast
enough to account for the time difference. In the end I believe the
MEIs conceeded that some of the time was from thin air. I remember not
feeling sorry for the MEIs after reading the case. I think it was in
Flying magazine. I think they got off light, as I recall.