90mm EDF Mirage 2000 build ---Start to Finish

[ddsjoseph]

The Freewing Mirage is a great 80mm jet and flies great. I have one and another one in the box as a back up. However, I always wanted a bigger version of this jet and decided to build a FLY FLY version of it. When I placed the order from Hobby88, I didn't know what was in store for me, as far as the build process. I consider myself an experienced modeler and thought it would be just like the other Fly Fly builds of the past. In the end this jet turned out Great, but let me tell you what a piece of garbage it was to start out with.. This is an older design and has been in production for many years. This was intended to be hand launched and for grass landings. It has no inherent design for landing gears. In this current age of edf jets, the 90mm hand launch is a thing of the past. So if you want to build one like this, you need to carve out the landing gear housings. There are some decent posts on other forums showing detailed photos of their builds. I was very appreciative of the use of their photos to improve my current build. Obviously the landing gears and retracts have improved over the years and would make a huge difference in the outcome of my final build.
First thing you need to do is evaluate is the battery compartment and wonder what the designers of this jet were thinking. The narrow space barely fits a 3S 4000 battery . What were they thinking!!?
Well, here are some of the photos of my build.
There is also no ruder , so you would need to carve out the servo tray and hinge the ruder.

[ddsjoseph]

The wings have no carbon spar, so I added two spars. One just in front of the landing gears and another longer one just behind them. I used Gorilla glue to hold the spars, since the glue expands like foam inside where the spar is housed in the foam.The fuselage comes in two halves, front and back sections. Each of those sections have a right and left half that need to be glued together. The front part of the fuselage needs to be carved out and lined with 1/32 birch plywood that I got from my local Hobby shop. I used hot glue with the plywood to line the inside of the fuselage. I also used a Freewing Landing gear trays to mount the main nose landing gear. I reinforced it with some plywood on top and the sides. .

[ddsjoseph]

Once I was finished with the front part of the fuselage, I hot glued only one half of the back portion of the fuselage. The motor and ESC are going to be sealed inside with no access after its finished. ( How smart is that FLY FLY?) Its important to test your motor and esc connections at this time to ensure that the fan is blowing in the right direction. It is important to note that the right and left intakes do not have a path that merges into a "Y" before the air reaches the motor. So you have to create a V shaped wall at the back of the battery compartment to create that airflow and isolate the battery compartment.

[ddsjoseph]

Once the front and back halves are assembled, then it was time to address the most important factor of this build, The Exhaust! This exhaust is wider than 90mm. This will not give enough thrust to propel this jet anywhere with 12 bladed EDFs. The usual rule is that the exhaust is about 10 mm smaller than the EDF blowing it. I had to think long and hard before I came up with a solution for this. I used the tail cone of the Freewing 90mm F16 and its corresponding afterburner. the intake cones are two subtle on the fuselage, so I used two halves of fuel tanks and carved out new cones ( as seen in white). I didn't want the usual gray/blue camo paint. So I decided on the Desert Camo. One of the photos show the sand beige base color.

[ddsjoseph]

Here are the photos of the final build. Note the battery compartment can now accommodate a 6S 5000 Admiral Battery. The nose landing gear is off of an F18 90mm, and the main landing gears are from an A6 . The main wheels are off of a MIG21.