welcome to the site, plenty of info on here, have a good search around there is weeks worth of reading on here, and anything your not sure of ask and we'll guide you in the right direction.
i'm based in Ipswich, as are a couple of others, we try and get together once a month, and you r more than welcome to join us, have a look in the meets section under east anglia.
if you wanted to meet up i'm happy to oblige, but i'm away this weekend, but could possibly do next week, or next weekend.