Bowties = Party

It's about time we brought a little AF into this thing. Again.

As many of you know, my lovely husband is smack dab in the middle of undergraduate pilot hell training. This means he flies a lot. And he sims {simulator - fake flying} a lot. And he studies a lot. And he has to decide what he wants to be when he grows up. Or at least, what plane he wants to fly when he grows up.

I've talked about it before, so I won't bore you with the details, but I will show you a fun little tradition we got to participate in a few weeks ago.

Each and every student pilot has to be able to {and have the confidence to} fly a plane all by herself/himself. With no one there. And thus, they have solo flights. And after everyone in the class completes the first solo flight, they have a solo party. This may sound like an oxymoron to you, but it's not. {solo party - a party celebrating the completion of all the first solo flights, not a party with one person.}

At said solo party, students mix with instructors. And instructors tell tales of the students first solo {10% true rule applies at all times}. The students pick out an ugly tie and wear it to the solo party. Based on how well the instructor thinks the student did on the solo flight, he cuts the bottom of the tie off. The smaller amount cut, the better the flight. Take a look at J's.

I will give this short explanation. J was the first student pilot to attempt to fly formation {ie very close to another plane} during the landing of his initial solo. We won't go into details. :-)

In order to make him a bit more presentable, I assisted in tying what was left of his tie into a bow tie.

 
And that was his solo party.