Your best bang for the buck will be getting a Hawk Sport with an OS 32 engine. Pretty much any .30 sized is a good choice, but the Hawk delivers great quality for the price.

Your biggest initial expense is going to be the transmitter, reciever and servo package. Most people will tell you not to cheap out on this and so would I. Rock bottom, I would get the HiTec Eclipse, but would really recommend the Futaba 9C for not a lot more.

Then there's the gyro. Lot's of choices, but save yourself headaches on the cheap stuff. Get a Futaba 401 with Digital 9253 servo combination. Best gyro value bar none.

Get yourself a simulator to learn to hover on. This will repay you 10 times over in crash avoidance and $$$ in parts.

If you try to cut $$ corners at the start, you're setting yourself up for failure. You're looking at around $800 bare, rock bottom to get set up, but you really should expect to shell out about $1200.

Try these online stores for more help, they all have pretty good beginner info:

http://www.heli-world.com/
http://www.ronlund.com/
http://www.heliproz.com/index.html

-edg-