Cockpit building and our wifes

[mariodantas]

Hello everybody,

I create this post to discuss about the life of a cockpitbuilder and his wife.

Les talk about how to share our time between our family and ou passion.

How to do to keep your wife happy while constructing a cockpit ?

How to handle this situation and make your wife happy ?

Some ideas ?

[Mink]

I bought my wife a horse. she is happy, the horse is consuming a lot of her time and that gives me time to build my cockpit

Kresimir

[jackpilot]

Ha!  real issues now...


All depends on your stage in life.
Obviously frictions appear when the Sim is competing with:

The amount of time and attention she deserves (deserves not wants  )
The amount of financial ressources available to her/your family
The amount of square feet (meters) available at home.

These amount of XYZ will vary considerably during your life. Wisdom is to factor this into your building program,

All will boil down to your reactions vs her attitude which can go from shared enthousiam (1% chances max) to asking you to choose between her and the sim (extreme but real). Coaxing her into your passion if she is receptive is one very good way to deal with that.
Pretty sure we will see different opinions on the subject!

PS:I am at the late stage and do not have to deal with the issue ...by default  !

[mariodantas]

Interesting points of view from both of you, many thanks.

I starter in January 2004 from scratch as before I flown with a joystick and a mouse

Today (August) I've a homemade MIP frame DST, a poldragonet overhead working at 90%, a real size pedestal (but only 1xVHF, 1xNAV and the XPNDR by the moment) and a home made 737 throttle wich is being motorized.

Well this takes some place in the garage but it takes almost all my free time to program, interface, do, redo, reredo, etc...

For me this is a habby as I like the 737 and I love solder, cutting, wiring, gluing, work with wood, shape, etc... well if you habe construct your cockpits yu know certainly what I'm talking about?

My wife has no hobbies, that a serious problem for me.

Is not a yoke but I don't know how exactly handle this situation.

[blueskydriver]

I must the be the 1% guy or let's say likely the only one guy who is lucky enough to have a wife (a CB member known as Simlady) that totally supports me, as well as she is into sim building and RC planes herself. However, that is due to what she says I did, "I trained her well" to be a part of this.

In other words, I made sure she knew this was not just my thing and that I needed her help, plus I told her why. She got to use her strong points where I lacked them; for example, she likes putting small things together, so she did all the FDS annunciators in my MIP and Overhead. She knew without those items the sim wouldn't be a sim.

A lot of guys see the sim as their thing, a man's thing and/or rather leave their girlfriend or wife out of it thing, but what the guy's forget is YOU'RE ALREADY A TEAM! The two of you TEAMED up in a relationship, so everything must be a team thing. You're 1/2 as she is 1/2 and until you both realize this, everything will have some sort of issue between the two of you.

My suggestion is you "ask" your wife to help you. Plus, stop saying she has no hobbies, she likely does, but you just don't know them. Ask her what she liked to do before she married you, because she was once a girl who had ideas and dreams too...

John

Ps. ask your wife to become a member of Cockpit Builders website, so she can read and post her thoughts, like you're doing now.

Edited for typos

[Jon Boe]

An interesting topic...

In my case I had planned to build a real airplane after I retired.  However, after an honest assessment of my woodworking skills I decided that would result in a fast trip to the marble orchard.  So, when I got into building my B744 the wife was relieved that I had changed directions.  However, her interest in aviation is zero, she won't fly in real airplanes anymore, even jumbos and gets airsick just looking into my sim when it's running.  She refers to my simulator as that "pretend airplane in the basement" when talking with neighbors but is also in the thick of things socializing when they come over to fly it so go figure...

Anyway, the way I handled it was to give her equal access to the available funds.  If I buy three new projectors for $4500 she has $4500 to spend as well.  Fortunately, she doesn't spend that much and quickly forgets how much I have invested in this hobby. 

And at least she knows where I am in the evenings.

Cheers,

Jon

[FredK]

I guess I have to say I am a lucky guy.

I started this hobby about 12 years ago.  Before I began I tried to explain to my wife what it was all about......She responded sort of incredulously ...The questions that got fired back were "You are going to build What? Where? What a waste of money!"

The thing is once I got into it she recognized my passion and observed that I was in the basement joyously soldering wires into the wee hours of the morning. She quickly came to some conclusions on the matter and came to accept it all.  She recognized that it was good therapy for me and perhaps more significantly concluded that it was better to have her husband safely locked away in the basement rather than him running around the neighborhood spending time in some bar or whatever. 

Although my wife is a very frugal person when it comes to money matters she has never once asked what any of the junk costs.  I think she is just afraid to know so she never brings the subject up.  I think she has also come to actually like the idea that my sim is now a fairly well-known curiosity attraction in our neighborhood.

Fred K

[Garys]

Balance of time and money I think is the key with our hobby. Don't mortgage the house and don't be a hermit locking yourself away. If you aren't doing any of these things and your wives/girlfriend is still unhappy, then I hazard to guess that this hobby isn't the problem.

[blueskydriver]

Thinking of what I forgot earlier... I guess it helps that Karen's (Simlady) madien name is none other then...drum roll please

WING

Yep, Karen M. Wing, so how could I go wrong with that? Now, it's Karen M. Combs, but the Wing in her really does make things fly perfectly for us.

John

[simlady/ Karen]

   Hi from John's other half.

As John stated above, we do make a good team, but I have also "trained" him along the way too. I started with model planes when I was younger but never had the desire to be a pilot. So when John started with the sim, years ago. I didn't think anything of it and let him run with the idea.

If I would have known back then, how just crazy this hobby would get, I would still have let John do it but I would have made him build me a "Tiny House" in our front yard. I would need a place to live later on, as his hobby has grown and Remote Control planes were added to the mix. Nothing like have the house shake and hearing him roll down the runway at 3 am on a week night.


As far as my involvement with the flying, I don't fly to much with him because I get motion sick too easy so, I bring him food and drinks and pop in from time to time. Maybe others wives would do the same for you as you flew. That way they can see you in "action" instead of just hearing about your trips. Just a thought.

If any of your wives what to contact me, I'll be more than happy to share what I have learned over the last 20 years of being the wife of a "Sim Nut." Ohhh the stories I could share... 

[geeman47]

Well said guys.

I guess I am very fortunate too, my wife is very supportive. 

When making the purchase I compared it to many guys my age (yep, I am old now, pushing 60 this year) who are buying Harley's and expensive motorcycles, I said this is about the same as buying one of those except you can't die in the sim, you are always around the house and she knows where to find you and it has a pause button!

Guess she wants to keep me around. 

[Aerosim Solutions]

My wife said she might learn to fly,
I said I would love for you to try,
There's lots of skills to rehearse,
And you don't have to steer in reverse!!

TRUE, Leonie really wants to have a go and I am very fortunate that she shows an interest. Then I bought her an expensive Thermomix cooking thingy and I haven't heard from her since!! Thermomix is the answer lol!

Cheers Gwyn

[Karl737]

Or a sewing room and several of those sewing machine things that sound like they have a much larger chance of taking off than my sim! Well, that has worked in my case anyway, for now....

Karl

[hexpope]

Then I bought her an expensive Thermomix cooking thingy and I haven't heard from her since!! Thermomix is the answer lol!

Cheers Gwyn

LOL, Gwyn,

[RayS]

My wife is a SAINT!

She doesn't question my purchases, but does keep me aware of our budget.

She's happy as along as I'm downstairs happily soldering away or on a flight.

(Only got the stink eye once on a 2am flight. Had the Bass-shakers turned up a little too high)

[osage]

Ray, liked your report on life in the Pit. I 'flew' a lot with Aerowinx PS 1.3 (mid '90s) Stopped probably ten years ago. Must say, that my wonderful wife never understood the 'why' of it back then, but now she is most encouraging since I started the hobby up again three years ago---probably because I'm 70! Enjoy!  Doug Pelton  Wenatchee

[mariodantas]

I see, you're all lucky guys, my wife HATES the sim, she says that this is a total waste of money and time and also stupid (even if the money spent is mine and not couple budget), is not possible to make her undertand that I love planes since child.

[quid246]

Well, you  could argue that she should consider herself lucky... some guys spend their money on booze and strippers.

[mariodantas]

Well, you  could argue that she should consider herself lucky... some guys spend their money on booze and strippers.

That will be in the roadmap, maybe this is better than stay home with a hobby, she deserves.

[geneb]

The joke with mine was, "Strip clubs or flight simulators, dear.  You pick." 

g.

[mariodantas]

The joke with mine was, "Strip clubs or flight simulators, dear.  You pick." 

g.

Waoooo, well done, will try it

[mariodantas]

Well, the things have changed here, so my wife agree with me that our GARAGE will be my boeing 737 and no more autos inside, so I'll reengage the construction.

Will take and ACER short beam and a 160cm X 90cm wide projection screen to replace the 3x27" screens.

[anijan]

Congratulations, my wife and I decided 2 years ago to do the same. So now half of our double garage has become my flightroom and I am building my simulator there. Good solution!

Jan

[mariodantas]

We're planning something like your idea, half of the place is for my sim, will install a wall to separate both spaces.