I hope it is better-run than the London-to-Sydney race in 2001.
In early 2000 we told the organisers that we wanted to enter a helicopter in the race - they only had planes to that stage, and The Boss of the air race was very keen to have us along. We paid the $15,000 deposit, went out to buy the maps - ONC 1: 1 million, very hard to find full coverage of the route - which hadn't been decided. Lay the maps out on the floor of the hangar, they went from one corner diagonally to the other. Initially we were going to use a LongRanger with extra tank, but some performance graphs of passing through the Middle East heat in April ruled that out. We bought an Agusta A109 and had a special tank made for it.
The Boss was still dithering about where the route would go, so I made up some lengths of string and pins and drew range circles and looked to see where we would need to refuel. Then the Boss said that entrants would need 700nm range - best we could do was 450nm. "No worries" he says, "We will organise intermediate stops for you."
Time passes by. No word about the route or stops. With plenty of time to spare, we tell him we want to fly the aircraft to London to pre-position, and use the reverse route to get a look at how things go. "No can do, we haven't decided on the route, and anyway the landing / overflight permissions are a once-off."
OK, we will pack it up and sea-freight it in a month or so. But still no details on the route, so we can't confirm that we can find fuel. All sailing dates go by, still no word, so the next thing is air freight, at a massive jump in cost.
Still no route details. Last air freight times approach, I ask The Boss about the extra fuel stops he was going to organise - oh dear, too late to do that. And one of the stops had to be in Iran and another in Pakistan, neither of which were being overflown by the planes. So, we had to pull out. Never mind, here's a cap and a jacket for your $15,000 and remember to pull out that special fuel tank.
Mumble mumble...