Mirage Marathon

The Mirage Marathon is an American homebuilt aircraft, designed and produced by Mirage Aircraft Corporation of Prescott Valley, Arizona. The aircraft is supplied in the form of plans for amateur construction, with materials kits supplied by Aircraft Spruce & Specialty Co. and Wicks Aircraft Supply as well as some specialized parts supplied by the manufacturer.

Design and development
The Marathon is a fixed landing gear development of the retractable landing gear equipped Mirage Celerity which was designed by Larry Burton. The design goals include high performance cross county flying at low cost.

The Marathon features a cantilever low-wing, a two-seats-in-side-by-side configuration enclosed cockpit, fixed tricycle landing gear or optionally conventional landing gear with wheel pants and a single engine in tractor configuration.

The aircraft is made from wood, foam and fiberglass. Its 25.00 ft span wing mounts flaps and has a wing area of 100.0 sqft. The cabin width is 40 in. The acceptable power range is 150 to 180 hp and the standard engines used are the 160 hp Chevrolet V-6 automobile conversion powerplant along with Lycoming aircraft engines, as well as Subaru, Mazda and Ford Motors V-6 automotive engines.

The factory provides some specialized parts for the construction of the aircraft, including leading edge fuel tanks, the aircraft canopy and landing gear.

The Marathon has a typical empty weight of 1119 lb and a gross weight of 1825 lb, giving a useful load of 706 lb. With full fuel of 50 u.s.gal the payload for the pilot, passenger and baggage is 406 lb.

The standard day, sea level, no wind, take off with a 160 hp engine is 800 ft and the landing roll is 1000 ft.

Operational history
By 1998 the company reported that ten kits had been sold.

In January 2014 one example was registered in the United States with the Federal Aviation Administration.