I have never been more reluctant to pull back the power levers and start descent than I was on that remarkable Sunday afternoon. It meant that the trip of a lifetime was coming to an end and that my dream day was finite. You see, I was in the left seat of a brand new Cessna CJ1 at 41,000 feet, and I didn't want to ever come down.
I knew right where to come down, though. The Collins Pro Line 21 equipment showed me exactly where the TOD (top of descent point) was, what the relationship between our proposed arrival route into Tampa and the thunderstorms was, and what our airspeed, groundspeed, wind speed, and air temps were. That wasn't the half of it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The whole magnificent event started when Jessica Myers of Cessna pointed out to me that it is still a few years before I can get my hands on a Mustang, so why not take a trip in Cessna's current entry-level jet, the CJ1? She then arranged for me to fly one from Lebanon, New Hampshire, to Tampa, a trip that my wife and I often make in our Cheyenne. Almost always make with one stop, that is.
So Dan Grace, Ross Schoneboom and Jessica showed up one beautiful Sunday afternoon in 508 Charlie Juliet, a pristine new jet with barely 200 hours on her. A cold front had pushed through New England, and it was absolutely gorgeous late summer flying weather. To make things even sweeter, we had a tailwind, an unusual event for a trip that basically heads 220 degrees. I had wanted to experience what the CJ1 could do over this route on this day because it is long (1,100 nm) and because thunderstorms often bedevil us on Florida summer afternoons. This was the hardest test I could think of that had elements familiar to me.
The first thing we did was to let my mother sit in the cabin. Her white hair looked great in the tailored elegance of Cessna's interior, but she popped back out quickly, acting as if the owners might show up and find her trespassing. Dan walked me around the airplane, and I was immediately impressed by how much thought has gone into making an elegant machine simple to maintain and to operate. There are a lot fewer items to check than there are on a Cheyenne, and they are easy to see and interpret.
I stood awkwardly by the door, hoping to be invited to the left seat, and I was. After getting settled and fastening the airliner cockpit type seat belts, Dan did his "This is really easy, you're doing great" imitation, and we fired up. No complicated start on this airplane. Just hit the start button and when you've got eight to twelve percent N2, bring the throttle up over the detent to idle and watch the Williams FJ 44-1A spool up. That is the whole start sequence.
Once the air conditioner was going, we reviewed the trip that had been filed by Cessna's flight planning service. Dan and I immediately agreed that there was no chance we'd get the route filed, and as soon as he called clearance delivery we exchanged knowing smiles as the controller announced that he had a full route clearance for us. It wasn't so bad, though: direct Carmel, J-75 Taylor, LZARD arrival into Tampa. I looked up J-75 on the high altitude en route chart and saw that the first fix after CMK was Solberg. By the time I had done this, Dan had consulted the Universal UNS 1L Flight Management System, entered the simple term "J75," and the entire route popped up.
