>As I like flying the older stuff I suggested to my wife that>we go shopping for a hostess uniform, high heels, black>stockings with seams .... you know the sort of thing :-) Now THAT would be the epitemy of "as real as it gets" lol :D

Hi AllThe wife using electricity to blow the joystick made me laugh.My wife like many others thinks simming is an incredible waste of time but as it keeps me out of the pub she's cool about it. Now as my study is next to the master bedroom I have to fly with headphones on so the sound of those Prat and whitneys dont wake her up or disturb her.So there I am on Finals for Cardiff EGFF after crossing over the Channel From Charles D Gaulle, sitting in the dark with total concentration, I'm so much into the Real as it gets moment that the real world doesnt exist.What happens.She decides to go to the toilet and without me seeing her creeps in behind me and touches me on the shoulder.I leap up in the air ripping the cans from my ears and banging my knee on the desk at the same time, clutching my heart that has just gone into an irregular heartbeat of 140 plus, the cat that was sitting in my lap has run up my chest using all ten claws as grappling hooks and sh*t my 737 ends up stuffed into The BA Maintence hangar.Whilst I'm still trying to get my breathing under control she is on the floor almost wetting herself and laughing saying something like, now thats as real as it gets.Don't you just love to fly.One day I'm gonna get a lock on that door.Wycliffe

Gee come on guys I thought this was a good thread to keep going for a while.You know we should laugh at ourselves more often.Wycliffe

After a few nasty scares myself, my wife and I came to an agreement that when I'm simming alone at night, in the basement with the headphones on (so I don't disturb our sleeping six-year-old), she'll turn on the room light before stepping up behind me. The sudden room light is startling enough, but nothing compared to her coming up from behind in the dark and placing her hands on my shoulders just as I'm turning from base to final. :-eek -- Walt

Hi MArkTotally unrelated to this thread but I caught a post of yours just after Christmas re Straight out of the box.You said you had installed FS9 on your Dad's machine whilst here on Holiday. I thought you lived in Australia. If thats the case did you have agood visit here in blighty.Wycliffe

Since I took over the nursery for the home cockpit, I have pretty much a room to myself for flights and total immersion...butwhenever I am on a CAT III approach to minimums after flying an hour, rain teeming, wind howling and holding the LOC for dear life...in comes my wife and says the groceries need transporting from the car to the house and thing are gonna start to melt...gotta get a lock on that nursery door but have not mustered up the courage yet.I can hear it now...what do you need a lock for, to play your game?Yeeesh, ..as real as it gets...

It is noticeable that ,in this age of equality and PC( the correctness thing - not computers) there seem to be very few ladies interested in Flight Sims.I can think only of three or four well known names.I think that there are proportionately far more female pilots/ATC in the real world than we have in the virtual one.Anyone care to offer any opinions as to why this is?Dave

DAveThis is so simple to answer.The reason why not many women fly sims is because all their husbands are flying them.Also they (women) would say that flying from London to New York on autopilot is not taxing enough for them with their huge multi tasking brains.Now I know someone is going to hammer me for that, but can I just say in my defence that I saw a programme on discovery in which they produced scientific evidence to suggest that men can't multi task. Now I am a man of science, my faith and philosophy is grounded in science. I am an atheist, I respect all others faiths, but as a man of science if science says I can only do one thing at a time who am I to argue with that theory.So when my wife asks me to do several things at once I simply point her to that valuable research that says men are genetically predisosed to only being able to do one thing at a time. Eg fly my sim all night long.Wycliffe

My wife was so upset one day she actually threw parts my PC down the stairs, mind you I hadn't surfaced for some days following the launch of the PMDG 737........but thats not the point!It was no problem though cause I have another much better sytem coming from UPS!! Now I go missing for weeks and she doesn't seem to stress at all................Funnily enough my little girl of 8 actually landed a DF/Ariane merge 737 in real hellish weather at EGJJ a few nights ago and it was worryingly good, I offered it to her as a joke after she claimed it was just a "game" - she also mentioned that it was "easy!" Despite my efforts to set up a real serious landing challenge that's exactly how she made it look - easy! Beginners luck?

Well, mine didnt throw it down the stairs, we dont have any, BUT she did launch my keyboard, throtle and stick out the back door. Does that count? At least she did do the decent thing and unplugged them.Marvin

Well for mine, brand new, not even out of the box, CH Pedals,delivered only 10 or some minutes before, tossed across the room and landed on the tile floor... never argue with your mother when you have a $120 piece of hardware inbetween you :+

<>Here is guy with the right attitude. I gotta ask, where is the baby now? Simmer extrodinaire I may be, but even I might have noticed I was throwing out the baby. Then again coming out of a soccer match one day I realised that I had the wrong 5 year old boy holding my hand, and another guy had mine. We changed over wondering whether our wives would notice, I mean to us one 5 year old is the same as another......

hi all,i was almost laughing my ar** off from some replys here...this is somehow the confirmation, that the species women reacts more or less the same around the world..doesn't matter if u leave in us, europe, asia, africa, austriala...!in my case, my SO often asks me why/what the hell i'm starring for hours at the same picture (=cockpit) and nothing happens...isn't that a waste of time for you? no, i reply, thats my way of relaxtion! well, you all can imagine, that i definetly don't get any notion for that answer...just a shaking head from here. she can not believe and feel, that simming puts me in my world where i can get energie for all my real life duties...for her, that must be goeing out with friends, sitting, talking...or shopping with me..visit her family, etc..you name it...completly different world. bottom line, she respects my time sitting in front of the pc and starring for nothing, but sometimes she mentions, how would it be, when one day my "beloved" pc would have been gone...but, thats ain't happening...! :-)cheersharald

May i direct you all to this link.You may already know of it, but even so, its worth reminding ourselves what the reality REALLY is. If you do not know it LISTEN!(lol)http://4dave.com/files/misc/jokes/10.7.02/mansong.htmThis is my anthem! I even play it as cockpit music. Have had it play through the Hi Fi at zillion watts, but still my wife fails to see the significence.

HiSo, last night I thought I'll do a long flight, (8hrs) so I dial up FSNavigator work out a flightplan from Cardiff to Florida, look for that funky 747 repaint job PC Pilot and load the sucker up.I have to tell you Fran, (the missus) watched the whole operation with some amusement, she had joined me in the study for a few minutes.This is rare as the study is my space.Anyway I took off, a perfect take off I have to say, the flight profile from 0 to 1000 ft was excellent, as I passed through 5000ft I turned on the auto pilot and Fran and I watched the Jumbo climb to 32000ft from external view.As the vapour trails spewed from the engines she said, "oooh thats pretty".Anyway eventually I came to bed at midnight having left the jumbo just nudging out of the northern tip of Northern Ireland.So I get up this morning to see where the jet is (should have been somewhere over New York) heading due south.What did I see but a blank screen. Arrrrrrrrrgggggggh! Fran had only woke up in the middle of the night and shut the machine down.When I asked as politely as possible why she had done this.She said "they have told me in work I must never leave my PC on all night for security reasons"What could I say, bless her.That lock is looking more and more an option.Wycliffe