You don't need to be an electrical engineer to start dripping

. Here's what I will say, RDA's are more enjoyable for me to use than and RTA. They hold less liquid, but the learning curve isn't all that steep. You kind of just buy one and play with it for a few days then you'll have it figured out. Don't have to worry about whether your juice has too much VG or PG.
Really all you need is a set of drill bits, or screwdrivers (to wrap coils around), and a pair of pliers or tweezers(to squish kanthal builds). They do sell those coiling rods now too which probably makes it even easier but I never tried one. Don't let the people on youtube scare you, even if you don't wrap a perfect coil you can still have a great vape. If you aren't good with your hands or have limitted mobility, maybe try a coil maker, also alot of places even sell prewrapped coils (kind of a rip off if you can wrap your own though).
The hardest part for me was learning how to wick cotton. Some people use almost no cotton, I like to use a good deal of it.
Here's basically all it is though.
- Unscrew screws on your posts
- Wrap kanthal wire around a screw driver as many times as you want to get the resistance you want (
Coil wrapping | Steam Engine | free vaping calculators - I use that website to figure out the resistance and ball-park it)
- Stick coil into posts, screw the posts down, and clip the wire
- adjust the coil so it's infront of the air-flow hole
- press the fire button until it glows red, then squish the coil together with pliers so it's tighter and glows from the inside out
- Stick cotton into the coil and into the juice well
- Put juice on cotton and vape for a week or two, then either replace the cotton or the coil.
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As far as cheap RDA's to go for there's a lot of them out there.
People talk highly of the infinite CLT and the freakshow RDA's. They have good air-flow so no need to drill holes in them. The CLT is supposed to be a really good balance between flavor and vapor too.
For regulated devices to start on, maybe, a 30W istick. If you want a mech mod, you'll want a more firm understanding of ohm's law, but for regulated devices it's a lot easier and you can't really mess up.
One of those RDA's and that device will run you under a 100$ and you could buy cotton, kanthal and tinker with it if you wanted too. I really like japanese cotton because it's easy to deal with. Can just cut a strip and feed it through a coil. Then with the left over cash get a pizza or some ice-cream

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