No need to do a major mod in order to expand the flight envelope. The 25/40 hours are minimum. There's no rule that you can't continue flight testing after 25/40 hours.

Now, there may be an insurance point if you are expanding the envelope outside the designer's specs...
Hopefully the designated test area is sparcely populated so the plane won't hit anything more expensive that a corn field, or such. And might as well forget about hull coverage if you crash the plane while flight testing outside the designer's specs.

Now, if you moved and the designated Phase 1 test area is impractically far distant, you'd have to go to or write  your local FSDO and get a new area assigned.  

Finn

Russell Duffy wrote:

Well, at least I now know that I don't have to write in Mach 5 for Vne,
just to make sure that I never have to worry about some anal inspector
at some point in the future.

If you set mach 5 for your Vne, I want to know when you plan to test it.  I hear Fox news pays handsomely for video :-) 

 

With all flight limits, you should just be realistic.  If you set an unrealistically high Vne, then end up selling the plane, you're going to be in deep doo doo when the new owner pushes it to your stated limit.  One of the best things the FAA has done for us is to give us the major mod rule, which allows us to do most anything without calling them again.  All we have to do is assign the plane back to the test area for a minimum of 5 hours.  But, as they say, with power, comes responsibility :-) 

 

Cheers,

Rusty (my stated gross weight is juuuuusssst a bit over Van's recommendation)