Sounds to me like you are a little overwhelmed by the whole PE thing … don’t be.
It is true that there is a lot to learn and a lot of ways to increase your gains and refine your approach: Clamping, hanging, pumping, heat lamps, ADS devices, etc … . You could easily get discouraged if you let yourself … but don’t.
Go ahead and start with the newbie routine. There is no equipment required and there are tons of guys that have posted some good gains with that routine. I was able to get 3/4th of an inch before I started to experiment with hanging. With time and consistency it is possible that you can reach your goals with just manual exercises.
If you keep doing the newbie routine for 3 or 4 months I am sure that at some stage during that time you will find yourself in a Home Depot or a Lowes somewhere and you can spend $3 and buy a few cable clamps … or buy them online.
The Capt’ns Wrench is essentially some strips of velcro cut on a specific way to formulate a hanging device … I think that I spent $15 on the materials. It isn’t hard at all to put together … but you don’t have to do it right away. Just take it a step at a time.
In the end, I found that after all of my worry about the required hardware and the potential expense, I ended up sending less on my hardware than i spent on beer for a month … and that is after i screwed up my first couple of atempts at building a wrench
Good luck
Starting (10 / 2011): 6.50 BPEL, 5.50 MEG
Current: 7.50 BPEL, 6.00 MEG
Goal: 8.50 BPEL 6.50 MEG