ORIGINAL: GuyIncognito
Your first $200 and 20 hours should go to a flight simulator for your computer. You won't even get into a sustained hover without it - unfortunatly. With the sim you will also find out if flying a heli is for you. Without it you ill burn up your first $500 in the blink of an eye without really even hovering.
With that said, buy a TREX 450S and some decent servos. Then go to helifreak.com and go through all of Finless Bob.s how to videos.
i disagree, i got into helis using FMS (free sim), radds school of flight (free) and flying my falcon.....i can hover very well and feel comfy doing so. had about 8 flights yesterday in which i had no crashes and have a good feel for the heli that i can move it around my yard (tail in of course). i think its just personal preference, i would buy a heli first (u can get a cable to connect your tx to your computer so you dont have to buy a usb tx) and practice using fms....now if all else fails and you have 200 to blow, by all means get realflight or something to that effect, it will have much better physics/graphics and give you a more real feel for the sticks.....but i wouldnt tell everything they "need" to get that first.