Well be down in Orlando this summer, for a conference. I'm going to look into what I need to do in order to drive something back and what kind of cost I'll incure as sometimes when you go to register out of state vehicles they have charges they hit you with

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I've done a little, but I have a masters in the theory of climbing

. I have a lot of gear as I've been gathering pieces whenever I see deals, many times it's come with saws and I just buy the whole lot and when the saws sells the gear is free

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There's a lot of reading material on treebuzz which is a forum more dedicated to climbing and those owning tree businesses, I use the same username over there. You can look around on the net and find a local recreational climbing group as most areas have them, it's gotten quite popular recently, I'd hope the guys there would let you try their equipment out, similar to a gtg we'd have

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If you don't have any gear you can buy a kit that has everything in it you need to start, but I wouldn't buy a cheap eBay kit myself.
I have everything needed for SRT and DDRT, double rope is much cheaper as you don't need all the mechanical pieces such as ascenders, descenders....but getting into the tree is a lot of work if hip thrusting

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One Of the first things I'd buy is a big shot and a throw bag kit(the kit comes with bags, line and a cube to store the line). You can use it to set lines for climbing and pulling trees(which can help pay for it

), video below of the throw line and bag/ball, just search big shot for a video of how they work.
Great guy to follow, lots of info and he has a blog as well.
He has videos of what he has in his climbing bag which can be helpful.