The difficulty of the above is what makes it worthwhile. Learning happens hard and fast in feathers and that's a good thing^

For a simple featherweight you need a few basic components:

Radio gear, ie, a transmitter and receiver set. Lots of options here, must be a 2.4Ghz type to be legal.

You need drive motors and some sort of reduction (gearing) after them so they have enough torque to drive the robot. Popular choice here is the insides from cheap cordless drills (there are a few videos on YouTube about how to make use of these).

You'll need ESCs (electronic speed controllers) to control the drive motors. These read the receiver's signals (which mimic what you're telling it to do from your transmitter) and control the drive motors to suit. Botbitz ESCs are popular as they are rugged and affordable.

A power source, as in a battery. A few years ago the norm was NiMH battery packs, these are now mostly forgotten with the arrival of LiPo (lithium) batteries. However these require additional care and respect as they are complicated to charge/maintain and have immense potential power. I might recommend starting with NiMH, which will be absolutely fine for most robot types and are generally more forgiving. Not a rule if you're simply sensible about LiPos and do the research on how to be safe with them.


You'll need to build a chassis around the resulting pile of components. The way in which this comes to be depends on your skill level, access to tooling, and creativity. The last one is absolutely the most important.

As for sourcing what specific components the above equates to, that depends on what kind of bot you want to make and figuring out actual parts from there.