Originally Posted by
Biggus
What altitude do they plan on dropping Stingrays from P-8As...
It'll be low level. Near-impossible to drop them from anything above a couple of thousand feet and still get an accurate prediction of the splash point from the release point (due to the vagaries in measuring the wind speed and direction profile). I can't remember how high we went during release trials, my (somewhat fading) memory suggests the max was 1,500ft ASL. Best accuracy was lower, 400ft sticks in my memory (and I could well be wrong). The parachute opens very quickly (about 0.8s after release) and so the thing slows quickly to TV, and TV is relatively slow (hence the problem with drift from higher release height).