EPT
So since I'm bored, I figured that I might as well write about my experiences there.
Getting picked to go on the camp in the first place is tough. When you consider the fact that only ~60 people total are chosen from the provinces of Alberta, Sasketchewan, and Manitoba for this course, you realize it's a pretty big deal. The selection process is pretty dull, so I'll just mention that you need to do well in a written qualification exam and get interviewed by three officers. This all happens over the course of several months during which everyone is constantly preparing.
The premise behind this summer camp is that in the span of two months, everybody has to learn to fly a plane well enough to at least pass the flight test. Most of us finished the course with roughly 50 hours of flight (about 1 hour per flight). This is pretty insane, because even though the minimum number of hours set by Transport Canada is 40, most people take upwards of 80 hours to get their license. So there's a lot of pressure on us to learn quickly and improve. One guy at our camp actually got sent home because he wasn't progressing fast enough. There were a few days between when we all found out, and when his flight home was, and it was awkward as hell. I mean, what are you even supposed to say to him? "It's okay, don't worry about it"? The man got to go on a scholarship course that is literally the chance of a lifetime, and he got told that he had to go home because he wasn't skilled enough. It was one of the most depressing things I have ever seen in my life.
A lot of people assume that flying a plane is hard. For the most part, it's really not. Heck, if an ordinary person wanted to steal a plane, they'd probably be pretty successful. Taking off is pretty easy - just open the throttle all the way and the plane will eventually rise up by itself even if you don't pull on the yoke. Straight and level flight is just a matter of making minor corrections which anyone could do.
It's the navigation and landing that'll kill you.
VFR navigation (Visual Flight Rules - navigating by sight rather than relying solely on instruments) is fucking hard. You'd think that being in the air would give you a great vantage point, and while that's true, there's one huge drawback - everything is tiny and hard to see. Unless you're close to good landmarks like a city or a water tower, everything looks the same. It's very easy to mistake one small river for another. Radio towers are often marked on maps, but finding them is stupidly hard since they're usually thin black lines on the horizon. And this is when the skies aren't hazy.
If you can't see any landmarks, things start getting hairy. You have to check for landmarks on your map in all the locations you might be in. The longer you don't know where you are, the more locations you have to check.
In my short time flying, I've been lost twice. The first time was on my solo cross country. Traveling in straight lines is simple in theory, but with factors like wind and heading indicator precession, it's easy to mess up your heading by a couple degrees. I ended up some 14 miles off course before I was able to figure out where I was. That time wasn't too bad though since I knew there were two easily identifiable landmarks up ahead that I could use to check my position, and I also had radio navigation.
The second time I got lost was on my flight test. Talk about good timing. Basically, the instructor told me to do a diversion from one small town to another. A diversion is an unplanned detour that you make to another aerodrome or airport in the event of bad weather or some minor emergency. Since it's unplanned, you have to come up with the data needed to plan your heading on the fly.
My diversion started out okay. I was on course and pretty much everything was going fine. Then I realized that I had forgotten to write down the time at which I had started the diversion. The theory is that if you know your groundspeed, present location, and how far it is to your destination, you can estimate how long it will take you to get there. So I had no idea how far I had gone and now had to rely solely on landmarks. I spotted a town that I thought might be the destination and flew towards it. I thought something was wrong, so I circled that town for what must have been 10 minutes before I told the instructor that we had arrived. Well, remember how I mentioned that all towns look the same? Yeah, it was the wrong town.
As expected, the result of that flight test was a partial fail. At least I nailed it in the retest, I guess.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/1ixXf.jpg)
See any landmarks? Me neither.
Looking for planes can be pretty hard as well. First, they're small. Second, a lot of planes have a white paint job, and white blends in very, very well with the blue sky. Fortunately, since the human eye is pretty good at picking up motion, they can be easy to spot as long as they're moving a lot relative to your position. So basically, if you're following a plane or if a plane beside you is traveling in the same direction, it gets a lot harder to see.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/VL3xg.jpg)
See that white dot just off the end of the runway? That's a plane.
An inexperienced person will probably crash if they attempted to land without any guidance. The first time I attempted a landing, I pretty much freaked out so my instructor had to take over. Seeing the ground rushing up at you is not a terribly calming sight. Although there's some room for error, overall, it's a pretty complex and delicate procedure.
First, you have to set up your approach. If there's a crosswind, you have to use a technique called crabbing to make sure that your approach is straight. This involves turning the plane slightly into the wind. Since the wind is pushing the plane backwards, the path of the plane then becomes straight relative to the ground and runway. Simple physics. Of course, you have to reset the heading of the plane so that it faces the runway once more during the final stage of the approach. Otherwise, the plane would shoot off in an unwanted direction on touchdown, or worse, flip over.
The flare is where I expect most newbies would mess up. The natural reaction of most people in planes is to yank on the yoke at the first sign of trouble. This is a bad thing. With aircraft, speed is life. By pulling up hard, you are killing any speed that you have and breaking the boundary layer of air on the wing. You're now stalled. If this is happening 50 feet off the ground during landing, you're royally fucked.
I was gonna write more, but this is turning into a wall of text. Maybe next time.
I don't think just anyone can fly a plane 
I think almost all of the pilots who get their licenses through cadets have received their glider pilot's license prior to taking the power course. The experience you get from gliding is invaluable, and it's more free flying, so why not? Funnily enough, you could tell which pilots had prior gliding experience just from how good their slips were during approach.
