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.
