Ujjawana asked a poignant question in a different thread,"What is the general mantra to strike the balance between the  hobby and family life ? This applies more to scratch (and that out of Balsa) builders like Saikat Da who might spend even longer hours in the hobby?"

Ujjawana this is my experience. My wife woke up at 2 am, a few months after our marriage hearing a strange rasping noise. That was me sanding the bow block of a Torpedo Boat. I will never ever forget the look on her face that night  !

As the years passed, she got used to my modelling and other unorthodox habits. Posting 2 pictures of my study with a build in progress. She doesn't interfere in my domain, and allows me to invade the bedroom once in a while with my parapharnelia, to perhaps watch a cricket match on TV, as I build. Strictly NO SANDING in the bedroom, assembly is allowed!

All my hobbies be it static modelling or Ship / Rockets and Rocket Engines or Pyrotechnics involve a lot of mess and I am lucky to have a partner who more than 'puts up' with them. She is always there for the test runs and trials with equal enthusiasm. She understands scales and has just begun understanding Tx, Rx and ESC (so have I  ). After 22 years of knowing each other, I couldn't ask for more.

The bottom line, I believe, is allowing the person lots of Space. If you see this as a sacrifice or as a compromise, then there is no magic. However, if this giving of Space to each other is viewed as a WIN-WIN deal, we have fantastic modellers like Saikat! That is my guess.

Come on Guys, what's your take on this?

Cheers!

VC

This is what i meant................

This is a really an "off the beaten track" thread 

I have always been a computer (well, software) guy, since high school.  So all available free time was spent reading programming and other technical books, or writing code.  When I got married, I was still spending 12 to 14 hours a day in front of a laptop/PC.

So when I started on RC about 2 years ago, my wife was happy that I have a diversion from this software addiction   I have mentioned this before, that I really felt that going to the field and flying with total concentration for about 7 minutes at a time really reboots my mind.  I consider it no less than Yoga (from whatever I have heard others describe it).  Having my elder brother actively involved in this (he is the one who initiated me into RC) also helps it all look like a legitimate/serious-yet-fun thing to do in front of both our spouses (and not just men behaving like boys ).  They do pick on us from time to time about how seriously we discuss minor aspects of RC, or how crazy we are waking up and going to the field on the break of dawn regardless off the season and so on.  End of the day, their support is such a welcome thing to have.

Even the kids are very mindful about any thing RC lying around the house.  They take extreme care when dealing with any of "Papa's RC stuff".  Guess they see how careful we tend to be about small things ("circlips" or small screws falling down and hunting them together with kids was a fairly frequent fun activity, until I got one of those magnetic antennas from a Japanese good shop).

Finally, there are some other aspects of RC that my wife enjoys or is sort of proud of. My local language skills have improved quite a bit since I started doing RC here, and I am called to do heli demos to various crowds.  So what if it is a 3 feet heli that I am flying, it is still a heli that is flying in the sky