I'm with Wreford-Brown: The three big supermods are all great; I prefer GWX for the dockside eye candy and the blimps, which I hardly ever see anyway. But I also use a wealth of smaller mods that add to my own personal feeling of immersion.
The biggest must-have is SH3 Commander, and it's not really even a mod! But it opens up the career to be an actual kaleun experience, the bad alongside the good.
Look through the threads for those different items, and ask lots of questions. We were all nubs once!