Best Weight Classification for a Newbie?

[Garfie489]

If your looking through at the events, generally all heavy events will feature featherweights and antweights. There are dedicated antweight events which only feature antweights. And i have never been to a featherweight event, but i assume for any event if there are enough people with ants, something can be organised.

I would not recommend starting with a heavyweight. And personally the investment made for a first ant, with all the radio gear and so on, is such i would personally rather a really bad feather. Then once i had learned the skills and decided this is what i want to do, then move onto building a good feather. This means you would not be able to enter the NEC (you could, its suicide). But it allows you a period where you are involved in the sport, but its not an ultra commitment. If you made the robot from say plywood you could change and evolve its design in the arena before moving onto making it from metal, which is the point where you would seriously commit, and the price goes up. Because then you would want the best of everything to compete at the NEC.

You can make a feather for less than £100. Especially if you got some spare materials lying around your willing to chop up. However, it will not be a competitive feather by any means, but it at least allows you to get a feeling of the sport without making a serious commitment, and you can use it as a launch pad to make a serious commitment latter. Ants are good fun, but the price compared to a cheap feather means id skip them initially, internally they are similar, but with a feather you need to be able to handle materials.