USA Fencing Registration
Continuing students need to sign up with USA Fencing. It’s only $30 a year, and our use of Vivo’s space depends on everyone being a USA Fencing member.
If you’ve signed up before through Vivo or another source, go to https://member.usafencing.org/search/members. Put in your name and switch ACTIVE ONLY to ALL Members- your membership and membership number will show up below. Then go to https://member.usafencing.org/ and sign in - if you don’t have a password you’ll definitely need to fill in the member number, and the form is a little flakey so you may need to reload it if it errors.
If you have never signed up with USA Fencing, you can sign up at https://member.usafencing.org/.
If you've signed up as a non-competing member before you can use the renew link on the upper right. If not, select non-competitive membership for $30. You’ll need to fill in Vivo Fencing as your club and emergency contact info, but you don’t need to fill out any demographic information as a noncompeting member.
The credit card page is also a bit cranky if you use autofill, try typing in the number manually.
Manuals
HROARR has many PDF manuals available in their manual section. Of most interest to beginning Forte students is the Liechtenauer Composite made from several early sources in the tradition.
If you would like to really dig into the breadth of what is available, the Wiktenauer is what you want.
Equipment
Purpleheart Armory is a great source for HEMA equipment of all kinds. The site has enough equipment to be a bit intimidating - if you're looking for practice swords the longsword page is what you want. The VB techniques feder and Italian feder both get good reviews and are inexpensive.
HEMA Supplies has Regenyei feders for longswords and many other weapons, as well as Sparring Gloves and a few other items.
For direct ordering of SPES equipment and especially custom orders SPES USA is a good alternative to Purpleheart.
Wild Geese Fencing’s stock is hit or miss, it’s a small operation which doesn’t get regular shipments, but what he does get is top tier.
There's a lot of bad interpretation out there, but there are a few people putting together worthwhile resources. The Illustrated Ringeck on facebook is a pretty nice set of modern photos that cover Liechtenauer longsword. Because facebook is a terrible place for information you'll have to scroll way back to start at the beginning.