Paul, 12 months ago i didnt know anything about electronics, fabrication and that, when i started asking questions it scared me a bit as their was so much to take in at first,from how to mount wheels, what motors,speedos,batteries,charging batteries, the list was endless. my advice is read all the old posts in featherweights or heavyweights, you will learn heck of alot from these, you will find alot of questions answered somewhere. or ask people here, someone will always answer.

this forum has all the knowledge you would need. I had never used a welder, or anything... but i have just built my first fw from scratch and to be honest i was surprised (not how easy it was) but that it wasnt as hard as i thought, if that makes sense. i researched the internet watching videos on how to weld and stuff, im by far no expert and compared to others on here im sure my welding is crap but i believe i have built a very competitive machine. also i found my daughter who is 8 can help with feathers, she has her own and loves getting involved, but for me personally i found the heavies she could only stand and watch, heavies do have their good points mind, to watch and for the audiance their second to none.

start with a fw, personally if you were looking to get straight in heavies i would buy something built (and im not saying that cos im selling mine!) but if you want it to last nowadays im still a long long way away from building a hw myself that would be competitive against robots like terrorhurtz. if you go to a fw event and watch the likes of little spinner, scorpian lem you will see that even though they are only 12kg they are very powerful and destructive. i actually enjoy fw more than hw but thats probably cos i get a bit out of my depth with hw. keep going to events and dont be afraid to ask to have a look in a machine its the best way to get experiance. you can build a feather quite cheap nowasays with places like gimsons, robochallenge and that. its when you want to upgrade it with the fancy bits that you can spend some serious £££.thats what happened to me when i started competing i saw all these nice chargers and controllers and saw the difference in performance and control. but ask the team with block of wood it finished 4th in uk champs and ask him how much it cost him to build. on the other hand if you want to pay someone to build you a fw robot their are companies like robochallenge.
thats my advice if it helps.

(Message edited by ady on September 17, 2007)