When I look back at N22UP’s first test period, the number that matters least is the one most people notice first.

Yes, Phase 1 ended at 40.45 flight hours. Yes, it took 64 calendar days and 35 flights. Those are real and satisfying numbers. But the real accomplishment was not the arithmetic. It was that those hours were turned into operating knowledge.

The shape of the whole period

From first flight on June 13 to the last Phase 1 flight on August 16, the period had a clear internal structure:

  • Early flights proved basic controllability and exposed the first squawks.
  • The first maintenance pause cleaned up the most urgent problems.
  • The July flying block established a healthy engine-cooling trend.
  • Targeted tests filled in stall, airspeed, and climb-performance numbers.
  • Late Phase 1 flights began to feel like real use rather than pure proving.

That is what I hoped the task-based framework would do from the start. It would keep the testing pointed at outcomes rather than hours alone.

The numbers that feel worth keeping

These are the headline Phase 1 numbers from the chronology:

  • Phase 1 start: June 13, 2023
  • Phase 1 end: August 16, 2023
  • Total flights: 35
  • Total flight hours: 40.45
  • Calendar span: 64 days
  • Maintenance pause: June 19 to July 2

The testing also produced several operating-limits numbers that matter long after the logbook stops saying Phase 1:

  • White arc: 58 to 100 mph
  • Green arc: 64 to 193 mph
  • Va: 142 mph
  • Yellow arc: 193 to 230 mph
  • Vne: 230 mph

Those numbers are what make the whole period feel complete. They are not just decorative marks on the panel. They are the finished form of many smaller flights, repeated notes, maintenance interruptions, and test-card questions.

What Phase 1 taught me about this airplane

The airplane emerged from Phase 1 looking like the airplane I had hoped I was building:

  • It cooled well.
  • It broke in cleanly.
  • It handled honestly.
  • It produced believable indicated airspeeds.
  • It rewarded methodical testing.

That does not mean every squawk died on schedule. Some of them clearly did not. The airplane spent part of June and July forcing me to chase leaks, adjust, inspect, and revisit decisions I might have preferred to declare finished. But that is part of the value of the period too. Phase 1 is not only a celebration of what works. It is a structured way to expose what does not.

What I would do the same way again

The biggest thing I would absolutely keep is the task-based mindset.

Treating the operating-limits sheet as the destination helped every other decision. It made it easier to accept maintenance pauses, because the work still had a visible thread. It made it easier to value unglamorous flights, because even a short repetitive sortie might answer a question the final airplane needed answered.

I would also keep the willingness to stop and fix things early. There is a certain macho version of Phase 1 that treats squawks as annoyances to push through. I think that is mostly vanity. Stopping to fix a leak or address an interference problem is not an interruption of the real program. It is the real program.

What I would do differently

If I could improve anything in hindsight, it would mostly be documentation discipline:

  • Capture every data source in one place earlier.
  • Keep the test-card outputs cleaner while the flights are happening.
  • Preserve a more explicit map from each operating-limit number back to its supporting flights.

The airplane gave me the right answers. I would simply like a neater notebook from the period when I was collecting them.

The real end of Phase 1

Operationally, the story does not feel complete until the next day, when the first passenger climbs in and the airplane stops being only mine. But from a testing perspective, August 16 is a satisfying place to stop. By then the airplane was no longer being asked whether it was safe to continue. It was being asked how precisely its behavior could be described.

That is a much better question.

This post is the bookend to Task-Based Phase 1: What It Is and Why I Chose It. The first post says what I hoped the program would do. This one says what it actually did. It turned 40.45 hours into an airplane I understood well enough to share.