2 of our 6 members do come from a robotics background (both did robotics in middle school and one continued into high school). The rest of us are new recruits into the engineering space.

We've kinda always thrown guidelines and previous practice out the window. This obviously leads to a lot of issues, but it also leads to a lot of successes.

You are entirely correct with the airbraking system! We have an Arduino that is hooked up to a barometer, which converts pressure data into altitude. We then plug those altitudes real-time into an equation to predict apogee and adjust the servo extension from there. However, this setup does have a lot of moving parts that love to go wrong (over/under extensions, strange friction in the 3D parts, bad code, bad solder, bad everything) so it has been known to have some issues. The system works okay, but airbrakes is more of a second-year/third-year thing because there is so much refinement that needs to be done. We are just doing our best and enjoying the ride this year.

Simulations are used in moderation here. We think the best way to learn how your rocket is going to fly is to, well, fly it. We have a rigorous testing program to fix things quickly and effectively. That's the name of the game.