My first advice is to check out as many competitor webistes as possible, it will give you ideas and the start of the techincal bits of the hobby. Get something of a design, either do sketches on paper or there are some cheap (free) CAD programs around (try gmax - how i started). Then come back here and ask for peoples feedback.

There are always people around on here to answer technical questions. For parts a good place to start is:
http://www.technobots.co.ukhttp://www.technobots.co.uk

Ideally start with a featherweight as it will help develop your skills, especially in fault finding which is very important in robots.

Any questions, you can email me - address on profile. But read as much as possible and you will learn, it is how I got started by reading Tornados team diary (http://www.teamtornado.co.ukwww.teamtornado.co.uk).

Ed - Team Turbine
http://www.teamturbine.co.ukhttp://www.teamturbine.co.uk
- (check out the feather diary page)