Building - Flying balance

[Paul G]

]People always ask why in the world i would want to come home after flying all day and work on a sim?? They just dont understand the type of people we are...

That summarizes it so well. There's few careers where it's so in the blood as yours/ours. Sim building for me supplements my 'obsession' with flying. But it also supports it. My last Instrument Rating renewal, I hadn't flown a real plane for a few months, and then only a couple of hours a year or so. Despite this, I absolutely walked the renewal, and was able to run rings around another much more highly experience pilot who was only a month or two out of practice. I feel my flying skill has never been so sharp. That's a really good feeling and somewhat justifies insomniac like sleeping behaviour and alarming credit card bills

[jytte]

Perhaps I should reword my question. What I meant was "Did anyone end up becoming a pilot when they only intended to build and operate a simulator?"

Didn't see this post/poll till now, so too late to vote. There are probably as many stories as there are simmers, but I may be one of the few(?) who came into this hobby slightly backwards

7 years ago I wouldn't have known a Cessna from a Boeing xxx. Then I met my husband, who was a real world pilot. Since he's not flying for real anymore, I got him FS for Christmas. Now, he's an ace pilot, but not much of a builder or computer guy, so I had to set everything up, meaning I had to actually start flying the sim, and then it bit me. I also wanted to build him a real nice sim (I love building things), but of course that takes a lot of research and planning, so again I had to do quite a lot of flying and studying, and the more planes I saw (real and otherwise), the more crazy about them I got. I'm no ace, but I love flying the little Cessna in FS, and I've been flying a real one too. I don't know if I'll ever get a PPL, but I know for sure I will fly again (for real).