What I can't understand is how Luke's piloting skills at crop dusting and varmint plinking in the canyons of Tatouine would have somehow prepared him for flying a top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art fighter with deep space capabilities.
I think the standard explanation for this is that Luke's innate "Force" skills made up for a lot of lack of experience. Canyon flying wouldn't be all that bad as a training environment, either.
That, and it was obvious that Empire troops really suck in Luke's time. I'm not that familiar with the "canon" but it seems obvious that sometime between the Clone Wars and Luke's time they stopped using those crackerjack clone troopers and went to conscripts dragged out of bars and shoved into poorly-fitting "armor" that appears to be incapable of stopping a well-fired spitball. Of course, either were better than those pathetic robots.
Off Topic » in reply to On the bright side...of... "one of those Kirrillian jobs".
Fighter skills