When my dad was going to build a new house, he was saving money by enlisting me to do the tree work required to clear the land, mostly lawn. Three trees had to go. He gave me a long safety meeting...something to the effect of "keep it away from your leg, and try not to get it stuck in the cut".
Tree one was a crabapple with my stepmom's Homelite. Not a big deal, and got me primed. Next was ascending into some tree with my rock climbing gear to get some weight off away from the house with a bow saw. Don't remember how I felled that, but it came down fine, presumably with the small Homelite.
Then it was time for the big boy. It was an elm or something of the sort. Using a borrowed step-relative's Stihl. I don't know how big the bar was, but I recall that the powerhead was meant to pull a big one. I feel like it was set up with a 28" or 32" bar that day. The tree was bigger than the bar we had. Would have been tough to double-cut my first facecut, luckily we didn't know what a facecut was. Good old sloping backcut from both sides, steel splitting wedge in the kerf, rope attached to my uncle's car, wheels spinning free as he'd get some pull away from the tree and less weight on the rear end. Got it down, without getting me killed. I do recall taking a limb or two off that last tree, and a bent extension ladder. I climbed up the tree with rock climbing gear before limbing it, so I didn't go down with the ladder.
Years later, after working a little while (like a month and a half) for a tree removal company to see a little bit of climbing, I undertook a side job, my first real climbing removal. I had my ms 361 for chunking, and a little Mac vibration machine for limbing/ topping a 28" doug-fir for a guy that I'd done some odd jobs for, previously. What would take me a couple hours tops now, took me two days then, using my rock harness (oh, so comfy), a static rope and a climbing rope for my tie-ins. Part way up I saw the water knot on my say lanyard come untied, watched the slow motion saw plummet, landing right on the tip. Bent the bar, and everything else. HO offered me his little electric chainsaw and long extension cord. HAHA. Got it topped, thought. Nerves were spent, so I came back the next day to chunk it down. Reasonably open dropzone once I cleared the retaining wall, using the brush to keep rounds from rolling downhill into the lake. I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to chunk a bit, then drop the spar, because of the neighbor's precious lawn, so I spent a long time pushing rounds off. Seems like they were seriously heavy to push off by the time I was getting lowerer. I must have been spent from working a week of dragging and chipping, then being oh-so-efficient
with my climbing technique for two days. Probably had 10+ hours into that tree.