Just to add two penneth. Have the officers who tried to discourage you been to the AAC and failed by any chance?
Get the Radio Ops in your own unit to give you some tuition before you go and brush up on your map reading, navigation is a subject that is taught, you aren't expected to have a deep knowledge at this stage. Might help if you refreshed the right angled triangle trigonometry stuff but you don't need any thing more advanced than secondary school level when starting out, they will teach you the rest.
May not be the same now but a long time ago if you stated that you wanted to volunteer for pilot training then your own unit were not allowed to withold or delay your application,
diginagain is more up to date than I am though.