Clearly the tie cutting is from a
generation long gone, since you can go for a long time without seeing
a tie on a soloing student pilot these days.

Ed, I suspect he was talking about the military. My tie was amputated
when I soloed at Pensacola in 1950.

When I soloed a J-3 a few years earlier, it was at a small airport, I
was the only student, and there was no ceremony of any sort.

vince norris