Dick,
A few points for you to ponder as you mull over the nature of the competition:
• Is the event going to be a race, ie all start at the same time first to finish? Or more like the original where the prize went to the first to do it and any starting time was allowed?
• If it is a race should it be flying time or total time? Do you want to encourage short fast hops or longer slower flights? Do you want to include recharging time?
• How do you resolve bad weather into that equation? It would be good if the decision not to proceed into a CB wasn’t the deciding factor in the race but also you don’t want people camped out in one place for a month waiting for exactly the right tailwind to minimise their total elapsed time.
• Is having the same battery the whole way required? It could get expensive if teams decided to over discharge batteries to gain an advantage if they just replace them at the next stop. But would a team be disqualified if a cell went bad?
• Do you want to limit battery technologies? If a highly unstable but energy dense technology is developed would you allow it and take the risk?
• Do you allow support aircraft? Support technicians? Pilot changes? Some of this becomes easier if the support is shared ie all aircraft fly to the one airport on day 1 but this limits some of the decisions above about a race all at one time and it cant be based on total time.
• Do you have a qualifying event a year or so before hand? Perhaps require a 1000km/nm flight(s). This would give you some certainty that the event was going to happen a year out. If you get no qualifiers (I suspect that you will get lots) you can pull the pin before having a big media letdown. This might though rule out some teams who are late to get organised but otherwise likely to be key competitors.