Well, there's been a lot of great stuff discussed here! I'm glad I'm not the only one looking at safety. I sent that spreadsheet and some questions to Tethrd, G2, and DIY sportsman, and none of them bothered to respond. I'm really thankful for the community here, especially as a new hunter.
The dynamic screamers/lanyards/items were all totally new to me, and I'm glad I got to learn about them. They seem very useful, so numbers depending I may include them in my setup.
The idea of climbing with 2 tethers totally blew my mind, which is why I love coming to these forums! It feels like it solidly addresses the problem of falling during ascension, and means you can have a lighter rope specifically for rappelling and sitting. Bonus points since it lets me use the Sterling C-IV rope I blindly bought and trusted, since it'll never have slack . I'll still run some numbers to make sure it all works out, and post it when I'm all done.
If a 1-rope approach is more what you're looking for, a rope mentioned to me in DMs was the Bluewater Protac. Its performance is 2nd only to the Tech11 rope, and it's about a buck a foot - which kinda makes it top dog. It's really tempting swap it out, and turn my 40' of workPro into drop test rope. For science, it's probably worth it. The ropes made me wonder about the colour though. Does anyone use a brighter rope (red like the workPro or something with non-drab colours), and if so, do you find it strains your eyes after a while?
The talk about lineman belt is awesome, and I'm interested in people's experience with them. I can see they keep you from falling away from the tree, but I wonder about falling towards, or aside the tree. I thought that one-sticking kept you closer to the tree, so the forwards fall forward might be a relevant risk - especially for the rainy day scenario we're talking about here. That said, I don't have a climbing stick (recommendations?), so I haven't even put toe to tree yet. Can folks comment on any falls while wearing a lineman's belt, or is that stuff just rock-solid?
On the hitches, I think it makes sense to avoid relying on an autoblock until I can guarantee that it's safe. That'll probably be through some sandbag drop testing, or just jumping onto a crash pad. Probably something to test when I finally have a climbing stick! Until then I'll probably keep to a prusik on the bridge.
Speaking of testing, I sent an email to Ryan (the guy in the vids linked earlier in the thread) and he said he'd do some drop testing on the GriGri similar to the G2 one-stick setup. I'll defo be donating as a thank you.