ARLISS Extreme

We fly our projects from the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada. It is a roughly 20 mi diameter quarter million year old dry lake bed - with about about a 6' layer of gypsum dense mud/dust covering a hard clay base. Base elevation is about 4000' MSL with surrounding mountains at 7-9k' MSL.

In the winter and spring, there is often water on the playa from run off from the surrounding mountains. This year there remains astonishing amounts of water - perhaps still a meter deep at our usual launch site and recovery area.

Our high power rocket club - AeroPac (www.aeropac.org), a prefecture of the Tripoli Rocketry Association - TRA (www.tripoli.org), organizes four major high power rocketry launches each year for over the last 20 years at Black Rock.

Mudroc - generally the third weekend in June.

Aeronaut - generally the first weekend in August.

ARLISS - 5 day event the second week of September.

XPRS - the third weekend in September following ARLISS.

The playa is currently covered with water and Mudroc looks in jeopardy.

We have finished new airframes for booster and sustainer.

Now must integrate avionics and build motors.

We have decided to return to vacuum bagged carbon composite fins for 2017 after the drag from aluminum fin cans in 2016 delivered disappointing performance w.r.t increased drag.

We are enlarging the science payload bay to accommodate two 1.5p PocketQube science payload satellites.

All other avionics and recovery remains the same having performed well in 2016.

Key issues are flight dates. We would like to plan for 3 flights but weather and FAA waiver issues may restrict us to two.