As we discussed last night at our monthly club meeting, Airfest XX, a regional launch held in Argonia, KS will be Labor Day weekend.  Argonia has the best high power launch site in the midwest in my opinion.  I think we are to 4 for sure going from this area - Lou, Craig, Jack and I.  Others who have gone before include Larry Terneus, Rob Chapie and Rob Benton.  I do not know for sure if any of them will be making it this year.  Argonia is about an 8 hour drive from St. Louis and is located about 60 miles southwest of Wichita, KS.  Typically those of us from this area, including Larry from Coffeen, set up our base of operations - Camp Missouri as it is often referred to by the LCO - with those from Columbia (Mark Grant, Tom Ciolino, Derek Kewley, Justin) as well as some folks from SW MO (Corky and his crowd along with former St. Louisan, Marty Beck.  Marty is now in Oklahoma and he and his group set upo right next to us.  Having 20ft x 100ft of continuous sunshelter for our camp is not uncommon.  I'll bring both of my cheap 10 x 20 ft shelters and we lash them all together as we build the camp.  (For those of you considering buying a pop up sun shelter, the ones with vertical legs are better than those with outswept legs.  The steel pop ups also hold up much better than the light aluminum ones.  Winds can get pretty brisk at times.  Anyway, as far as details, I know that I will be riding with Lou who will be pulling the club trailer.  There will be plenty of room for rockets and range boxes in the trailer.

While not as big as LDRS, this is one of the larger regional launches (and is typically an international launch - bring people from as far as Australia and the UK.

KLOUDBusters definitely hold the most organized and well run launches I have ever seen.  They have a 25K ft waiver with windows up to 50Kft available.  (Notify them as soon as possible if you plan to fly above 25K.)

There is camping in Argonia, the closest town to the launch site.  There are hotels (and restaurants) in nearby Anthony, Wellington and Harper.  Some people stay in Wichita (but it is an hour away, so not ideal).  There is no onsite camping except for RVs (no hook ups).  Their launches usually have plenty of vendors and rockets galore.  Hopefully there will be some big projects to watch.  The first P motor flight I saw was there - ini a museum quality 1/3 scale mercury redstone on a Pat Gordzelik dual propellant motor - Amarillo Blue and Polish Rojo.)

For those interested KLOUDBusters usually organizes a bus trip one evening to the Cosmosphere and Space center.  It has many unique exhibits.

To find out more about this launch go here:
http://www.kloudbusters.org/airfest/Default.aspx

Anyone interested in going please let me know and we'll see if we can do any car pooling or at least transport of rockets and equipment.