PilotPhotog Podcast
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PilotPhotog Podcast
Transforming Lives Through Flight Simulation: Empowering Veterans and Building Community
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Unlock the transformative power of flight simulation as we welcome Towbie, the inspiring founder of DCS for Disabilities, and Hammy, the social media manager for Fox 3 Servers. Discover how Towbie's initiative is bringing therapeutic benefits and a sense of camaraderie to disabled veterans through the Digital Combat Simulator (DCS). From personal stories of overcoming challenges with minimal resources to building a supportive and inclusive community, this episode highlights the remarkable journey of individuals who refuse to be defined by their disabilities.
As we listen to Towbie and Hammy, we also delve into the technical intricacies of setting up and maintaining flight simulation servers. Learn from their experiences about the time, resources, and challenges involved in managing home servers, and see how outsourcing to professional services like Fox 3 Servers can enhance your DCS experience. By sharing real-life examples and personal anecdotes, they illustrate the importance of reliable server management for squadron activities, ensuring a seamless and uninterrupted flying experience.
Finally, Toby's poignant journey through physical disabilities and life's adversities showcases the resilience of the human spirit. Hear how community support, both online and offline, has played a vital role in his recovery and mental health. From the unwavering support of his sister-in-law Stacey Friedman Quinn to the camaraderie found within the DCS community, Toby's story is a testament to the power of meaningful connections. Don't miss this heartfelt episode that underscores the transformative impact of flight simulation and the importance of supportive communities.
Links:
DCS for Disabilities:
https://dcsfordisabilities.com/
Fox3 Servers:
https://www.fox3ms.com/
The Hornet School:
https://discord.gg/S6shy3XP
Digital Combat Simulator DCS World:
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/
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Welcome to the Pilot Photog Podcast, where we dive deep into the world of aviation and military flight simulation. In today's special episode, we're honored to feature two incredible guests who are making a meaningful impact in the digital combat simulator, or DCS, community. First we have Toby, the founder of DCS for Disabilities, a group dedicated to helping disabled veterans find support and camaraderie through DCS. Toby's organization helps provide these veterans with the opportunity to join a growing community and immerse themselves in the world of virtual aviation. Through DCS, veterans can rekindle a sense of purpose and connect with others who share their passion for flight simulation and aviation. We're also joined by HAMI, the social media manager for Fox 3 Servers, a company that provides turnkey multiplayer servers for DCS. These servers are crucial for creating a seamless multiplayer experience, allowing DCS pilots to engage in dynamic, large-scale combat operations with other players from around the world. Fox 3 servers offer a high-quality solution that enhances the experience of flying in DCS's incredibly detailed and realistic environment.
Speaker 1:And for those of you new to DCS, digital Combat Simulator World is a free-to-play flight simulator developed by Eagle Dynamics. It allows players to fly a wide range of military aircraft, from modern jets to iconic warbirds, with additional aircraft terrains and campaigns available for purchase. Dcs provides an unrivaled level of detail and immersion, with additional aircraft, terrains and campaigns available for purchase. Dcs provides an unrivaled level of detail and immersion, making it, in my opinion, the best combat flight simulator available today. So, whether you're a DCS veteran or just curious about the world of military flight sims, this episode has something for you. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Welcome gentlemen. Hey, Tog, my brother. How are you, sir, Doing?
Speaker 1:great, doing great.
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 1:Hey Emi, Thank you both for being here and taking the time to join me on the podcast. Toby, can you tell me what DCS for Disabilities is about and why you started this program?
Speaker 2:Thank you, tog. I appreciate that question. Dcs for Disabilities started to be about my brothers and sisters that I know were disabled and challenged a little bit that they may not have disclosed to folks, because we just want to be accepted. We don't want people to think we're challenged in ways. Well, I'm a kind of person that I recognize a lot of things and along this journey I saw something that needed to be done, which was just such a positive thing, which was just form a little group of people that found the right way to fly for themselves.
Speaker 2:It turned out that I found out there were hundreds of people that felt like I did, which was just simply DCS is an awesome therapeutic tool and squadron life is, and all of the things that we do in DCS are awesome tools. But sometimes we find our way in and we don't know. Discord or it's a big, big place, and that's where I started was kind of blind at computers and kind of this and that, and along the way I figured we needed a really good hub and resource that was free and showed people how to play DCS in every level imaginable, because we can do that from what we call potatoes all the way up to what you call your high-end devices, if we put our minds together and that's kind of where we kicked off this program, but it was limited to the funds of me and my family to produce this effect and we were being very helpful through different places we went.
Speaker 2:Our motto and our thing is to stop stigmas, but our goal is to help people play DCS to their ability. And everyone has disabilities, which is the following they might be young, they might not have resources, they might be old and not have resources. They might have plenty of money but not knowledge. But they can all find their way into something called Discord and there we can instruct them through many methods, like I found my way in the Hornet School, and they do that with love and affection. So I just have basically built this with my friend Hammy and Luck and AC and you and a whole bunch of other people that we will shout out and we'll get recognized as our partner sponsors Invictus, cockpits and I can't keep naming them because it would just sound like I'm bragging, but everyone has agreed this. There's enough negative in DCS. We can turn it on and it breaks for some various reason, but you know who's on board to hear about it and fix it Eagle Dynamics or the gentleman that made the aircraft mod or something.
Speaker 2:There's always something changing in this thing for positivity, and I went through all gaming communities, tog, to find out one thing, what was toxic, and remove it. Because I was a struggling veteran with tendencies that would produce an effect that we call the number 22 in our community veteran first responders. I've had a lot of trauma in my careers, short as they were. So I know negative, everyone knows that. But what we don't know sometimes is how to be positive if somebody doesn't start doing that. And once you start, everyone wants a taste of that. It's like a drug and I just introduced, like bad people do a good thing, and got people hooked. And here we are today with Hammy, who knows so much about my life because Hammy is me.
Speaker 3:Welcome Hammy but um, yeah, no man, uh, like toby said, like this, this uh dcs for disabilities has just been a one it's been a pleasure to be a part of, but too, it's just.
Speaker 1:It's really cool to see our community grow and it's all the people of different walks of life come in yeah, yeah, it's amazing and it really does bring um anyone from, you know, former military veterans to aviation enthusiasts, to even gaming enthusiasts um, and it's becoming such a larger and larger community all the time. Tell us about, sort of what the mission is for DCS, for Disabilities, and what services you provide or can provide or help or assistance you can give.
Speaker 2:So, for instance, immediately upon these wonderful messages that our friends at Eagle Dynamics share for us and AC and yourself, we get onboarded. Suddenly. It's massive and I have to be attentive to that. And what happens so far is we get people saying hello and they introduce themselves and qualify themselves like we all must. Hey, I have the following missing something or inability to do something. And then they further that with two things. They offer interjection into how they fix that synergy. We now have more knowledge. And then they they get a DM from me and we discuss or they enter in saying hi, I have a colorblind son who has a red and green issue and he wants to get into gaming.
Speaker 2:Red and green issue, uh, and he wants to get into gaming. We're new to this and he's just been diagnosed and what tobes does is goes down to his eye doctor and have a discussion with them. We're in real time with this gentleman and we look for methods because we know modders. So I have clusters, which is a terrible thing, but I I can correct it through treatments and I do, but it prevents me from flying dcs at night sometimes, when I'm in a certain region of clusters and I'm delicate. I want to still fly DCS. I'm capable of it, but the black triggers them and my brothers at the Hornet School knew that and so they, along the way before we decided to do this, showed me the mods capability and they gave me the ability to have no blackness in my entirety of my screen, because even the nogs wrecked me and I was able to fly with the Hornet School in a mission at night or my brothers at 501 or any of the places. That has been very welcomed and helpful with this community. So, knowing that we're working with people like that and then those people are sharing their stories with me and we're furthering the information chain, so we're developing things like teaching methods and instituting knowledge, as well as gaming and fun and therapy right, so we do peer crisis as well. We build game. We will be gaming one time and we'll have a moment break out where someone shares an event. It becomes traumatic for us and we move the conversation away from gaming.
Speaker 2:Well, if you're in that chat, we need to move it. We got crisis intervention we go to. Or if you jump in my server immediately into the crisis intervention area, you're met by me or someone as a peer to say, hey, did you jump in the wrong place. Can I help you? And if you don't answer me that's weird I start messaging you the crisis materials saying hey, brother not sure if there is A, b, c or D and A, b, c or D is my own personal things that I know to ask people, which is hey, did you find this place by accident? Are you in this chat by accident? Do we have a language barrier? If you could translate and communicate, and if you can't, brother, we love you here. We don't know why you're silent, but we appreciate you stay.
Speaker 2:I'm going to move you down to general chat. Maybe you'll join in with my brothers and we're hanging out down there. We don't know what happens to that person. A lot of times they're flying on our server and that's just the rules someone told them. But they can't speak or they can't communicate. They can barely fly. Not my judgment call, but it is my call when you enter Christman Management to address that. Or you enter General Chat and you say, hey, I'm missing a leg, anybody know what to do. And a guy jumps in and says I fly the Apache with no legs because I made a mod and then, poof, our resources grow. So right now.
Speaker 2:We're a hub for everything. We're a resource hub. We're a place to fly missions. So you can join us and join VMFA 312 or kitty hawks with us, and spud knocker as well has the most amazing weekend missions. You don't have to go with spud knocker all week long and hang out with him as a squadron. He'll help you along the way. His people will help you along the way, or the same with kitty hawk and those guys.
Speaker 2:They offer open missions. If you find them and you're a good dude and you can manage to take off and land in any way you can. They welcome you. They want you to fight hard, drop bombs or do whatever the mission is. Maybe it's just go out and recce something in your airframe and they're accepting and we fly with them. And they progressively make it harder to challenge our skills and no one ever asked us what we were disabled about or capable of, incapable. They just said here's the rules. We accept you, come fly with us. If you can't do the following things, learn. And then when they see us do it and they see us do things like boat stuff and land on there, as Hornet School guys most of us are, they go. Where'd you learn that at Tobes and they get pounded by a link that takes them to our invite channel for all of our friends. We're growing our resources invite channel for all of our friends. We're growing our resources.
Speaker 2:We want you to come in and share what you do and fly with us, but not always us, because, guess what? I was an entertainer and I know entertainment value and if I can't produce it and you're in downtown, in my vicinity, in my community, I need you to be down there. If you can't spend money with me, I want to show you who you can. I can't please everyone. We're not trying, but we're trying to give you a safe place to enter where we might regulate your hostilities. If you show up that way but never kick you, nobody gets banned from our place or any of that. You just simply have to be kind and if you're not kind, we'll just talk over you and be kind and not direct negative energy towards you or anything. We might move you out of our chat or something. But we saw a lot of things that just made people seem like they were easy to throw away, and they're not bad things. They're judgment calls that other people have to make. We don't make them here. We do all positive things because there is way too much positivity.
Speaker 2:Then I made Eagle Dynamics personally and I want to tell you community about this company. I have never and I have tried to find another resource to do this therapeutic thing to save my life and I found Eagle Dynamics to care about their online playing community so much and be a part of it to the degree they're capable of doing that it hurts their feelings when their community starts talking negativity and we noticed and we bring about only positive. My group, my partners, my friends and everyone that I partake in we have only seen the positive because that's all there's been. You're Rocky Roads, yes, but we all leave our house and the community fails to put potholes in. But then you get to town and there's a community shelter, there is a safe place that that community has built for people. But then you get to town and there's a community shelter, there is a safe place that that community has built for people. But the road was hard to get there, yeah, and Eagle Dynamics has that hard road because they're doing all this and they started this with a free program.
Speaker 2:You enter, I didn't have to buy anything to fly it, I already owned a keyboard and a potato. I flew it on a potato and it operated on a potato until someone told me I needed to do better, and I really didn't. We needed to meet guys like Jester and all of the group that I have that know how to fly very well on a limited machine, because it can. You just got to know what you're doing. So we do that too. We connect you with the right people. Might not be in my group, might be in my group. We know a guy.
Speaker 2:Our motto is this hey man, we're DCS for Disabilities, we're here to help you. And we know a guy. We're not panel handlers. We are a nonprofit. We don't ask for money. We don't expect you to give because we're givers and we're OK. We don't need your dollar. If you want to share it, there's an open invite to give. I'm told by my foundation that that's okay to do, and I'm not about that. What I'm about is doing first, showing you who we are, because we've had enough of negativity and everything, including the people with their hands out. So my hand is not out for anything more than to be friends with people, and it's worked. I have so many friends in this community that we've not even focused on anything negative so far.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and we're going to circle back to kind of how people can get involved in flying missions and DCS and everything else. But before we do I'd like to ask both of you can you share with the audience sort of how you found your way to DCS?
Speaker 2:I mean, you go first, brother, because I'm gonna tell you what, when you hear mine, you're gonna think, if you hear it first, that it's this, this terrible thing. And I want you to hear hammies because, brother tammy, please share.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah, of course, thanks um well, I mean, you know, uh, I came from, um I guess what I guess this was my first video was a growling Sidewinder and a CW Lemoine Video of them flying the F-14.
Speaker 3:And, you know, long time lover though I, so I bought the f14 on steam and I didn't have a computer yet. I said, you know what, um, I'm gonna buy me a computer one day and code happened and I had a really good job back then. So I bought my computer, got, got my peripherals and and said, all right, let's, let's load up dcs now, obviously I didn't have the latest and greatest stuff and so I wasn't able to really fly uh on like anything but caucus and the 14 was a stroke. So, you know, I met a good group of guys with the Central Arkansas Gaming Group. Adam was a really cool guy who helped me a lot. And then, it's just like, as I progressed, I made more and more connections with the community. You know, I met Luck and then, through Luck, I started working for fox stream my solutions as their social media guy. Um, and then from there it's just, you know, I met toby. I met, I mean, obviously, tog uh, who's just been an awesome person to be around.
Speaker 3:Thank you yeah, of course along with a lot of other. You know youtubers or just big community members, and then, um, you know just the joy of flying. You know like one day, my, my kiddo, will be able to do this because I've, you know, I've handed him down my old stuff. So once you know, once we're able to, it's just like he's gonna be doing the same thing. It's just like it's just it's. It's a very, in my opinion, it's just a fun game.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you can't beat that you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, it's almost like to me the ultimate sandbox, because DCS comes with a mission editor. You can get in and just fly by yourself. You can do a mini air show. You can get in a strike with a bunch of other people in a squadron. You know you can do, I guess, what we would call player versus player. You know dogfighting against other people or against the AI. So really you can play it however you want. Some people just like to take off and land, and that's okay too right.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely, some people can't bring themselves Tog. I've met some folks that said to me, toby, can you teach me how to fly the 18 peacefully? And I said, sir, can you define that for me? And he said, sir, I go into dark places all the time. And I said enough. Said, brother, I'm going to teach you the overhead break and I'm going to teach you how to case one and things. Come to the Hornet School with me and I won't share you who these people are, but while I was at the Hornet School we proved what we are and who we are about.
Speaker 2:This is what we are. We're guys and gals and gentlemen and ladies in this community who want to do one thing we want to learn what we want to learn to do what we want to do. Most of us want to do a mission of some kind and partake in it in either a reconnaissance, peaceful fashion, or be the lead in a situation that represents something that's greater. And it might seem like something too much for one and something too much for the other, but we just have all the same goal is to do our mission here, and what we've done along the way is this We've saw that need in some people's inabilities to carry it out. They lacked the Persian Gulf, they couldn't fly with us. They were stuck with this trial by fire thing where they had to keep trying things and trying things. But they owned their computer, they had paid that cost and eagle dynamics lets them fly so much free stuff. But we were being negative as a community and excluding them, not letting them fly trials on our missions or things, calling them too new and other things. Well, on our servers you fly everything, unless you're on the warbird server, which it's for Warbirds, but in the range server. What you get is the ability to learn and everything and fly a trial and fly in there on that trial and as many trials as you want, because why wouldn't we? We want you to discover Eagle Dynamics ability to be therapeutic in many ways, whether you think you need it or not. Ego dynamics ability to be therapeutic in many ways, whether you think you need it or not. So we do the following when we see a brother had and have track IR and the rules where he had to have it and those are the rules because you can't get to the effect, you need to train somebody in a timely fashion to get them on board. You can't always help, but I can and my community can. My disabled brothers who have more than most, do we buy them the track hour, we anonymously send it to them or we somehow convince them to take it and they graduate from the Hornet School or not. Sometimes they would leave and then we would do things like that because we stopped giving to wasteful charities, we gave to positive things which meant something to us in our community. And we do that and we gift and we gift and we gift and we do it like this I'm flying everywhere, and I fly with a young gentleman and where he wants to do a mission with us, but he doesn't own the Persian Gulf map.
Speaker 2:This gentleman had to make a choice. His choice was the following I either pay my dues to become a young glider pilot and you know who, you are, young man, and I appreciate you or fly with my brothers on Persian Gulf. I can do both at certain times, but I want to do one now and that's fly with my brothers on Persian Gulf. And I watched him struggle with that and make the right decision, which was to go outside, do a hard thing at his young age and get his glider club thing back going and become that glider pilot he dreamt about, like toby did, when he said you told me I can't join the navy, let me show you how. And I did so when I saw that he woke up to the persian golf. Now, didn't he? Because to me that was a bag of chips that I'm precluded from eating now in my life, in my country and in his, that was the Persian Gulf map. And that man can now do both. And I call him a man because he's my peer, because, well, I can't glider but I can buy the DCS map and my family can support that and this foundation gives it and we don't have to take a thing from the money that's given to the foundation, because that foundation has to raise money to give it away. Right, that's our job. But it has to pay bills and do things on a certain time and that is once we're going to do our final goal. And our final goal is not a final goal, it is one final representation and that is through Invictus, cockpits, eagle Dynamics and many other names I won't mention here. You'll see we're going to place into a deserving veteran first responder.
Speaker 2:I hope, by many, many moments of review, by many, many people who are professional peers, to make sure we gift something that is adequate, receptive, capable of being used, understood further, technologically, supported by our group here, that we grow to become in the Scuttlebutt Lounge and then Stop the Stigma has to pay companies like mine, my family's to haul it. We've strikingly have the ability, through my family units, to do lots of things. We can get things delivered and haul them. We got to pay for that where it's expensive. But we can do logistics for our foundations. We don't need to go and spend millions of dollars on buildings or anything, but we'll have to have a warehouse for our thrift exchange that we are overburdened with the amount of gifts people want to give us to start. That's what we are. That's how we do it and why we do it is just to fly on Saturdays with VMFA 312 or Sunday with Spudknocker, because that's what we all want to do.
Speaker 2:We love campaigns too. We really want to get in campaigns like Baltic Dragon and Reflected. We want to get there and get, and we. But they're hard and we got to learn. So the multiplayer community helps us and me and my secret real pilot buddies and my mech buddies and all of our secret groups, because we can't expose ourselves, whatever that crap's about. I appreciate it. We all secretly stop flying with our multi-friend brothers and we jump in those campaigns on the f4 and the f18 and do all that stuff. And we're so excited about the new campaigns coming out that pretty soon myself, baltic Dragon, ac, eagle Dynamics and a few other people will be hosting an amazing release for them and it's going to be a good time.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:You're going to be able to go and sneak away with all the knowledge you learned at places like the Hornet School and all of our other friends at the Rotorhead Club at DCS Dogfighters People. Please check out our website. It's growing with our friends list because me and Tog don't have enough time to show them all to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on that note, real quick I will leave links in the show notes to all the things we're talking about. They are all works in progress.
Speaker 2:Our Discord is stable right now but changing. We have a group of security members, security minded folks, because we were exposed to lack of security, which cost us almost our ability to do our job, which is maintain good discussion with our partners in secret so that they're not exposed and misunderstood in any way, and that that moment cost us, and we now know it's good and safe. We have our partners at Fox three are smart, they know how to do that. They're going to teach us how to host a major event. So when our friends that are wanting to show up let's just describe them as our most esteemed guests who need to be protected can come and do an event with us in two weeks called the End of Summer Sales event where you fly in our end of summer sales that Tobias has made.
Speaker 2:That will do the following allow you to fly everything and win prizes, including trials, and it has everything you will imagine in there that you can co-op with. You want to fly this competition with your four group of friends. That's all you've managed to do in your squadron and you ain't been able to do a mission. Come to our challenge event when we host that, Show up, enter it as a four group, pick your category within this mission, set, fly it, win. Continue through this Olympic style event that's team orientated, but also you got to make good choices as team players to win big prizes.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'd like to talk about sort of how both DCS for Disabilities and Fox 3 servers make DCS accessible.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just real quick to add to that. People that don't know they hear about DCS. They see, you know, like you said earlier, a Growling Sidewinder video and they say, cool, I want to do that. They get DCS and I mean, it can take a year to learn how to fly a single airframe really well. So I'd like for both of you to share how your organizations help make DCS more accessible to everyone.
Speaker 2:I would like to answer this on the behalf of my partners and friends at Fox 3, because this was part of our plan and we did an analysis and I did it this way as a family, we looked at through our business minds the way to put servers in my house so me and my friends could fly, and we did that cost-effectively, because that's what we do, and we found out that there were many problems, which was time, resource and ownership of something like that. So, number one how much time do you have to invest in keeping your squadron flying on your home server? It was okay if you're already got that technology and some do and they do it well. A lot of places can manage that, they do it well, but the average of us can't. And I wanted to fly consistently with my bros and I wanted to provide that service and I thought I could do it myself and after a heavy analysis I found out I was most incorrect. I can own. So For what I would do, what I need to do, I could own so many Fox 3 servers and all I would own was the capability to do maybe I don't know eight, and I already have four.
Speaker 2:Every one I buy, I get a better deal from Fox 3, and if you want to own one and try it out, you can do that with Tobii 10. Tell them Tobii sent you and you'll get 10% off that month that you try it, and I promise you, if you don't like it, you can talk to me about it. I'll probably give you your money back on that, because here's what I know my servers run 99.7% of the time. The 3% is off my chest and usually on part of my problem. I didn't do a simple rebootme or something that is easy to hosting his server. Well, guess what happens? We can't fly on Friday, Bob's sick, he's out, the power goes out, the server doesn't get reset, he's not home from vacation. So many things that were negative were easily solved by luck and his crew and.
Speaker 2:Hammy and them, who worked very hard to make a server for DCS built for them. They investigated that, they worked hard at that and they've produced the effect where, if we get larger than 11 or 12 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 60 and we get to 80 percent, uptimes are 99.9 percent Servers. Quit complaining about DCS, because it's not really DCS. That's the problem. They release an update. They tell you it's coming. You expect it. It's not their fault, bob and your home computer can't cooperate with the fact that there are needs to reset things. Box three can they do it? They do it as a company. It costs the cost to me to own four servers, to fly with my buddies and have a test mission server and a secret server, and all this for all this special events and eventually own eight hasn't even produced the effect of giving me the inability to do anything other than keep doing this with what I would have only been able to produce. Maybe two servers from at the 6,000 range cost to get it going. And people will yada, yada me about that. But you can. But what you can't do is argue with the fact that my missions are created by people who came to me and said, tobes, can you help us fix our broken stuff? And I said broken, how? How's it broken? And they said it's broken this way or that. And I just said, sir, your stuff's not broken, it's on a home system that might not be able to be functioning right like Fox 3 did. And we put it on my server and there was nothing broken. And if you fly the Warbird server, you'll agree there's nothing broken. If you can't handle the Warbird server, you're broke. We'll teach you how to fix that. I've got RooDog and Serpent and JayHog and all of them friends. You can go to their house. The rotor heads are so kind, we have friends, their links are there. We'll teach you how to do things, but you can jump on the range and it works flawlessly. It runs like butter because they built it too, but it didn't until it met Fox 3.
Speaker 2:Now and now, guess what? I gift a server to a certain someone who knows for a fact that this is the way, because that individual was stressed and hard up to try to get his missions and things going and he couldn't do that without the help of Fox 3. And Fox 3 was helping him, but Fox 3 had a limited time to do so and Tobes came aboard and saw the limit was running out because I'm a partner and they talked to me about business and I knew that they were going to have to do something. And I showed up to help my brother out. Didn't even know him because he's a great guy and what I knew was if I was trying to come home from work and had a squadron and needed to fly on Friday and I was away from town and somebody showed up and said hey, I'm here to help.
Speaker 2:Here's a server you can fly on. You don't have to worry about nothing, the power won't go off, you don't got to worry about being on vacation. You can pay somebody to handle it or not. You can handle it yourself from your phone and reboot me and run your stuff and just throw a mission up and that man can worry about doing his business. And I don't care if I ever ever get that server back.
Speaker 2:I don't want it back because that brother will go out now and remind himself that the cost of raising money on patreons and all these other things to keep servers going could be misconstrued as stealing if you don't account for it, when you can't have your squadron members fly for two weeks while you're on vacation and all of that other stuff. But you're taking money from them, gentlemen. So account for yourselves this way. That money would be better spent at the discounted rate of buying a server, that in a year's time I buy four, and that four I couldn't have afforded to spend to get the machine. I needed to do four, and I know that. And then I can't run it and keep the power on like Fox 3 does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, they're excellent. I use Fox 3 myself I'm a partner as well, just like you and just for our audience. To play DCS you don't need to have a server. You can install it on your computer and play it play campaigns, everything like that by yourself. If you want to fly with other people, you can look for a server, a DCS server and that's usually something that somebody else is paying for or managing themselves and join that and sort of.
Speaker 1:The third step is if you want to form your own squad or your own community or whatever, then that's when you would need to get a server. Either, again, you set it up in your house, as you mentioned earlier, toby, or you go with someone like Fox 3. What Fox 3 does is they take care of all the IT side of things. They get these servers up and running, they maintain them, they update them, they do all that, and all you do is log in and start flying and invite your friends and they start flying. So it's a turnkey service. And I'm mentioning all this because, unfortunately, during the course of this interview, hammy dropped. It looks like he lost power. I just messaged him on Discord.
Speaker 1:So, if he does come back, just for our listeners, they'll know he wasn't here for this segment of the interview.
Speaker 2:I would have let him speak because he's probably more in love with them than I am, and I'm pretty in love with them, sir.
Speaker 1:It's a great service.
Speaker 2:Thank you for noticing that and I appreciate you because, as a fox 3 supporter, you also know the truth, which is it helps eagle dynamics. It helps everything, because you're gonna want to play your campaigns in single player when you need to, but eventually, if you decide to come aboard with the multiplayer aspect, eagle dynamics supports that in ways you community members can't imagine and keep overlooking. And we're going to hear. We're here now to remind you that they're here for you.
Speaker 2:I know they're here for you because they're here for me. Eagle Dynamics supports me and they don't have to help me at all. They saw what I saw and they knew what I know and they do what they do because of that. And when we discuss things and I tell them you saved my life, gentlemen, they're so proud to hear that because they know that already. I ain't telling eagle dying, I'm nobody. I'm not giving them information they don't already have.
Speaker 2:I'm giving them the ability to speak on their behalf and show everybody because they're too busy trying to make us fly these things to stop and do what we need to do as a community, which is appreciate them, accept them, be patient with them when they release something and they tell us why they release it early. Be patient. Stop bad mouthing it. It's a process that has to happen in business and you're having fun still, and if you're negative about that, that's okay. We understand life is negative. We're here to show you we can counter those negatives by being so positive. We don't focus on them and address them anymore.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and very well said, Toby. Thank you. I'd like to ask can you share with the audience how DCS has helped you personally?
Speaker 2:Yes, tog, I will. I'm not ashamed of the fact that I am a silly little man who just wanted to work and never be retired or disabled or any of the things that none of us want to be labeled as, and I fought against those and continued to work and work my way on and off of disability, as as I'm allowed to. If I make too much money, which I wanted to do then I stopped getting paid. I report that I failed to care for myself and I was a truck driver a really hard one, like I was a gladiator and then I was many other things a corrections officer for my state Proudly, I love those guys, they were so great to me and then a jail officer for my sheriff, and they were so great to me.
Speaker 2:And then, as I failed those jobs as a disabled person that they tried to help. They gave me another one, sent me from the prison to the sheriff's department and then to the water department because they knew I wanted to work and they they really probably, should have probably enabled me to not, but they honored me by letting me keep trying to be not disabled and work and they kept me to the county until I couldn't work no more. I got another disease or something else, and then my legs started achieving the effect. I was always told that if I kept working they would and they gave out. I was in a wheelchair and then I fought against that and I fell on September the 11th.
Speaker 2:I think it was 2021 or 2020. Brother, a lot of things have happened, but I fell in my front yard trying to leave my wheelchair to go move my lawnmower, because a couple of years earlier it parked there and I was on it and now I wasn't. And it bothered me. It was outside of my beautiful window. I couldn't go upstairs anymore because my house wasn't fit for that and I was just angry little man and got up, walked across my yard to step on it and I snapped my right leg off above my brand new replacement that they was trying to help me walk again with. But so much damage had been done, so many surgeries had been done. I had so much scar tissue that they were just trying to give me a little bit more mobility to stand or do anything. I asked them, but in reality I should have stayed in the wheelchair but I didn't. I broke my leg off and should have died there. What my family would agree would be number nine. They kid me and call me that was my ninth life. You got to be right now. So I lived against hours of laying out there with, I think, a severed I don't know that. They did emergency surgery on me immediately after getting me out of the yard and it further put me in the hospital to the degree where I was so traumatized by my already traumas and my many surgeries and stays that I was a poor patient.
Speaker 2:Someone came in I don't know who they were and said sir, we need to talk, you're going to go to some nursing home and you're never going to go home and all of these things need to happen and you need to learn to live with that and you need to have some acceptance of this chair and your life at home and figure out how to go there and live, because you're suicidal most days. I can rectify that in my head and understand and appreciate it that you're not active. I said, yeah, you probably summed that up with. I'm not going to agree because we can't do things like that with those statements, but you summed up sort of what I've got going on and they showed me a spud knocker video because they had asked me some things over the days about what I did when I was a kid and told about Hornets and they I don't know if they understood what I was saying or not, but they knew YouTube and a Spudknocker video and I watched that and I said I can start a Hornet. I started him as a kid. I'm a term ap low and I got a little high power experience before there was hush houses, which was so much fun, dog, you just got to hear about that one day. So then I went, I know what to do. And that person said, clickety, click, brother, get out of this hospital. And I still didn't know how to go home because my house wasn't fixed. The VA takes a long time to help you with that.
Speaker 2:But I met Stacey Friedman Quinn, my sister-in-law, who should have been here, would have been here, but she's too busy helping her side of stop the stigma. She works with autistic children around this time of year. She works 20 hours a day, like I do, making sure that these families that don't have on her end of her foundation that she runs for us that I don't have a part of because I'm not a 501c guy. I'm Toby, I'm the connector, I'm dcs4disabilitiescom. I'll hook you up with who you need, guy, right, that's all I do.
Speaker 2:She stopped the stigma foundation and she saved my life the following way she stopped helping autistic children for a minute and went to my house and gathered up all my documents that my wife had saved to prove that I was the best VFA 106 broken down gladiator that I ever could have been through hard times and that I was a first responder in my community and I was 100% now permanent and totally disabled with a really bad house. That was a beautiful house, two stories with a split level. A beautiful place we earned and we worked for before we ever got disability.
Speaker 2:I did that on purpose, because I'm not a taker. So now we're living in it and I can't come home. But my sister-in-law owns a 501c. Took her paperwork to Home Depot. I don't know if you can say this or not, but I'm proud to Home Depot local Rome, georgia sent a truckload of material to my house, sir, and people I don't even know showed up to my home and, sir, I didn't go to a nursing home or anything crazy like that.
Speaker 2:I got to come home to my house and I still didn't get to go upstairs for a long time because I wouldn't let them fix that and the VA couldn't come aboard and do that because I wouldn't ask them to, because I wanted to walk again and go there by own self and we built DCS down in my lower room and I started out in Spudnocker and someone there helped me get this base that if anybody needs to know you just reach out to me. It allowed me to pull an office chair off but still have. My family made it so because they saw the therapeutic value in Eagle Dynamics digital combat simulator for me and they helped me in Spudknocker figure out that I needed to go somewhere to figure out all of the hard things, because that was a busy community and they were trying to do missions and stuff. So I left there and went on a journey that enabled me, through ANZUS group to find Flying Ka, who helped me so hard.
Speaker 2:Guys, you just don't know what this guy did and what I did at 430 in the morning to learn to be able to start my hornet the way I already did, because sometimes for people like me with the no gaming experience, to get in here is a little complex and people can take advantage of you and take money and cheat you, but I've not met those people yet. I keep hearing about them. All I've met is good places and I've, and take money and cheat you. But I've not met those people yet. I keep hearing about them. All I've met is good places and I've ended up there and they helped me so hard and so good that I was able to help them, and now I'm doing that with the same energy that they helped me.
Speaker 1:That's, that's awesome and thank you for sharing that and you know kind of walking us through your journey. Just on a quick side note, I've flown with Flying Caw. He's great, Wonderful, wonderful dude.
Speaker 2:Oh, that man is a hard ass. He reminded me of a Marine that man put me through my paces right and he doesn't take no for an answer because he knows your ability. He sees it and you think he's hard, but what he sees is your ability and he has a good mind to find that ability and help you, and so does every mentor at the other names to follow with that equipment into a person's home. That will be as meaningful as me.
Speaker 2:I was going to end myself in misery and even though I loved my family and they meant more than the world to me, tog, I lost vision of that and I connected through that video to something I wanted, which was to start a Hornet again, because I was ripped of that when I had to leave the squadrons and I was told that when I when they said they wanted to medically discharge me from there, I heard a less than honorable discharge and I fought and they were so giving like like all the other people were and said we accept your hard charge and let's put you to work, but let's not let you go back on the flight deck or do any of the fun things. Let me send you to some other place at a desk. And I ran from that. I should have stayed, but that's okay because it led me to here and I've made only good choices based on the foundation of my gladiator and United States Navy training that I got from Orlando, which was a very I'm sorry guys everywhere else.
Speaker 2:Orlando, which was a very I'm sorry guys everywhere else. Orlando was tougher. We shot pistols and learned to fight. End of discussion.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean. Again, thank you for sharing that. It takes a very brave person to be vulnerable and honest about their journey and you have absolutely done that here today. And again, thank you. For people that are hearing about this for the first time, maybe through this podcast, tell us a couple of ways how they can get in touch with you, how they can find your Discord server or how they can get involved. Can you share that with us?
Speaker 2:Yes, our social media team has blasted out recently Instagram. If you'll notice that there's been heavy Insta and I'm pretty sure Hammy will get Twitter up. He's got issues in Texas with where he lives, like we all do. Another reason why we all love Fox 3 servers the power goes out, so we keep active on those. You can find us at dcsfordisabilitiescom. You can also dcsfordisabilities at Gmail. Me personally and my staff will receive that.
Speaker 2:If you need something or have something to offer us, or we have something to offer you, the best way is to join our discord. That I believe my brother, tog, will allow you to engage in here. And if you don't, absolutely no discord. Find youtube and search the discord for dummies, videos or whatever, because that's how I got here. It's easy to do. You can get on discord and join the Scuttlebutt Lounge. We're DCS for Disabilities. Our home is Scuttlebutt Lounge because I'm a Navy guy and we sat around the Scuttlebutt Lounge. We called it in our shops and talked to Scuttlebutt and did things like bros do. So join, be a bro, or come Tell us how you can help, or come a bro, or come tell us how you can help, or come let us help you.
Speaker 2:Fly with us fly with our friends at dmfa 312. Learn to go to kitty hawk servers. Learn to go to spud knocker and be a good mission pilot, because they welcome you to and it's good content and it's so much fun. They're all great people. Go to the hornet school if you need that.
Speaker 2:I'm not telling you you got to fly the hornet. I'm saying I'm a hornet and if you want to learn to fly it like me, which is like a professional pilot in a virtual world, we can start your journey there. I'm pretty sure they can continue it because I'm pretty sure there's a furtherance of the Hornet School coming. Stay tuned, join that Discord as well. Come into my Discord and join many. We're a hub and we're also an entertainment place pretty soon. We're two weeks out from starting to be less and greater. We're going to be less focused on our inabilities as disabled person and our next campaign is to focus on all of these people who've worked so hard that you don't know yet to bring entertainment, value and therapy back, as well as crisis management as well as some real talk areas we need to go to, as well as crisis management, as well as some real talk areas we need to go to, as well as some help.
Speaker 2:I've got resources you can click on if you need and you're a veteran or you're in crisis that are available. You don't got to tell us, you just click on their links. You don't have to brag, but you do have to give yourself one more day and I'll leave you, gentlemen, with this. My DMs are full of my brothers that communicate with me and I know them and I'm not anything special, but I am a peer counselor. I qualify that because I've been through so much that I can understand what's safely to say and not to say. Don't ever think you can to someone who's in danger. There are leads. You can give them links. You can provide ideas by saying this following thing to them Brother, I'm going to send you some information and I want you to hear me now.
Speaker 2:You're on the other side of the world and I can't stop you from doing anything, but I can ask you to give me one more day because that's all my family ever asked me to get here was Tobes, and they call me that because they always have, because I got that moniker when I wrecked that plane towing it Tobes. And they call me that because they always have, because I got that moniker when I wrecked that plane towing it.
Speaker 2:Toby and they call me Toby and they say Toby, toby, give me one more day, brother. And that's what I ask you, gentlemen if you show up in our place and you feel some kind of way, don't ever be afraid to just give us one more day. Today might look ugly, you might show up, we're not flying there, nothing happening. You pop in and you go oh this is boring.
Speaker 2:Keep an eye out we're coming soon with entertainment but also know if you're there, you're in crisis, reach out. We know a guy. We know a guy and we want you to just know that. If you give one more day to anything, including yourself and us, I promise you that next day will look brighter because you'll wake up with more friends and a brighter future. Thank you guys. Thank you Tog, and thank you Eagle Dynamics and AC and Hip Games and Rupesh and brothers I can't name them all Join us, you'll find them, thank you.
Speaker 1:Toby, that was awesome. Thank you, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. What you guys are doing is nothing short of incredible and amazing, and so I'm very honored to be a small part of this, and I want you guys to grow as much as you possibly can. I want you to reach as many people as you can, so I will put this everywhere and anywhere I can, on all my platforms, and we'll do this again. My friend, thank you again.
Speaker 2:Thank you, sir. I appreciate you, Todd.
Speaker 1:That brings us to the end of another episode of the Pilot Photog podcast. I want to give a huge thank you to both our guests, Toby, the founder of DCS for Disabilities, and Hammy, the social media manager for Fox 3 servers. Their work not only supports the DCS community, but also provides meaningful opportunities for veterans and gamers alike to connect and engage through this incredible platform. We've explored how DCS for Disabilities is making a difference in the lives of disabled veterans, using DCS as a way to bring them together in a supportive, close-knit community. We also heard from Hammeh about how Fox3Servers is helping DCS players get the most out of their multiplayer experience with their top tier server solutions. Toby and I actually met through the Hornet School, another DCS group dedicated to teaching new pilots the ins and outs of the F-18 Hornet.
Speaker 1:As always, if you're interested in learning more, I'll have links to all the websites and resources mentioned in today's show in the episode description. Be sure to check them out, whether you want to get involved with DCS for Disabilities or take your multiplayer experience to the next level with Fox 3 servers. This is Tog. Thank you all for tuning in and if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to the Pilot Photog podcast and leave a review. Until next time, keep the blue side up, and now you know no-transcript.
