The first thing you should do is head on down to the local flying field and see what the people you will be asking for help are flying.

Barring that the best all around beginner ship is the Raptor. Parts and help are every where and they are very popular, they fly from mild to 3d out of the box depending on setup and http://www.raptortechnique.com has step by step build and setup.

The Venture is ok but its rotor head design leaves something to be desired and they develop slop quickly. This can be fixed with some parts from one of the larger ones but why buy twice.

There's other options, on the higher end the Hirobo EVO are a little nicer but setup is a little harder and they are more expensive.

On the other end are the Venture and Caliber but neither are as nice or fly as well as a Raptor.