Amid furor over drones, Delaware father-daughter team promotes ‘future of aviation’ with ultralight plane

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When ultralight aircraft pilot Heather Chirtea hears talk from congressmen that mystery drones sighted in the night sky over New Jersey and nearby states in recent weeks should be shot down, she’s horrified.

Her father and fellow pilot John Chirtea, however, dismisses the talk as the media looking for a story to sensationalize after the presidential election.

But each day, the unfolding drama about what’s been appearing in the night skies hasn’t stopped the father-daughter team from southern Delaware from taking off in their electric, one-seat “flying car.”

The BlackFly aircraft, one of only five in the country and the only one in the region, is often trailed by land vehicles during flights that last no longer than 20 minutes. Social media posts about the aircraft generate lots of chatter that maybe it’s one of the mystery drones.

Heather, an exuberant 58-year-old, says that aside from her current worries that some misguided “do-gooder” is going to shoot her or her dad out of the sky, they welcome all the attention.

She regularly posts videos and photos about the BlackFly aircraft on her family’s SoFly Adventures website and on social media. This week, she even playfully labeled one “Taking My Drone to New Jersey,” even though it was just a jaunt to the beach in Delaware, and watched joyfully as it garnered tens of thousands of views.

“My dream is to be the first person to go coast to coast in a flying car,” she told WHYY News. “I’m going to go out for funding to try and find someone who’s crazy enough to fund” such an extravaganza. “We’re setting ourselves up for a reality TV show about touring and flying cars and the crazy things that happen on tour, but we’re just not there yet.”

So while the near-hysteria and speculation about the drones gives them a bit of concern for their own safety, they’re amused that some think theirs might be among the aircraft flying at night. That’s because their plane doesn’t fly at night, and has never been in New Jersey. Nor is the BlackFly aircraft a drone, which by definition is an unmanned aerial vehicle.

John, who is 86 and has been flying for nearly 70 years, scoffed at some of the comments he’s seen. “It was a UFO, it’s a Japanese spaceship of some kind, and a bunch of hogwash,” he said.

The retired developer, who moved to Milton, Delaware, from Washington, D.C., several years ago, loves taking people on rides in his BlackFly and being followed and then greeted on the ground when he lands his new $200,000 toy, which he’s had since August.

“This is the future of aviation,” he gushes. “There’s nothing like it.”

Beyond being such a rarity in the sky, the aircraft certainly is unique.

The 13-foot-by-13-foot BlackFly, which is constructed of carbon fiber and weighs about 350 pounds, doesn’t need a runway and lifts almost straight off the ground at about an 80-degree angle. Eight propellers are powered by battery-charged motors. The aircraft can reach 62 mph, hover in midair and fly backwards. It’s operated with a joystick and a computer tablet.

Heather often communicates with her dad from the ground via pink walkie-talkies when he’s flying. Though the craft can ascend a few thousand feet, they usually stay between 250 and 500 feet so they can enjoy the 20 minutes they have in the air before having to land.

John keeps the BlackFly at his home. He usually takes off in a nearby soybean field and soars over the Delaware 1 highway that leads north to Milford or south to the beaches of Rehoboth and Dewey.

“So these someday will be for the executive that lives an hour and a half drive from his office yet he might be only 20 minutes away on a flight,” he said. “So someday they’ll be a bunch in the air.”

‘Five guys who are drone freaks are out there scaring people’

But for now, there’s only a handful of BlackFly aircrafts, and the Chirteas’ plane is definitely not one of the drones and other aircraft spotted in New Jersey at night this month, sometimes within restricted airspace at military bases, airports and near President-elect Trump’s Bedminster golf course.

As federal and local agencies provided confusing, incomplete and muddled messages since widespread stories of the sightings surfaced earlier this month, theories have abounded among the public about the drones and other aircraft, which to date have generated more than 5,000 reports from concerned citizens.

Some speculated they were from an Iranian “mothership,” Chinese spy planes, part of U.S. military maneuvers or amateur drone hobbyists banding together to wreak havoc and cause panic.

But Tuesday, the Pentagon, FBI and other federal agencies issued a joint statement that said authorities don’t suspect the aerial vehicles “present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast.”

The statement said “there are more than one million drones lawfully registered” with the Federal Aviation Administration, a number expected to grow.

“We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the statement said.

As to sightings over military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere, “such sightings near or over [Department of Defense] installations are not new,” the statement said. “Local commanders are actively engaged to ensure there are appropriate detection and mitigation measures in place” to protect military bases and the public.

That’s essentially what John Chirtea surmised last week during an interview.

“People are going to get used to them eventually,” he said of rampant drone activity. “But this whole bit of, ‘I saw three of them in New Jersey at night,’ it’s total bull****. Somebody was playing with drones, which have lights on them, and they said, ‘I’m just gonna take them up. We’ll fly them together and see what’s happening.’

“Somebody’s onto a kick here, and suddenly, Heather and I are in the limelight because we’re actual human beings in a flying car, and if you want, a drone. They’re not military. They’re not a danger to the public and it’s a hoax basically.

“Five guys who are drone freaks are out there with their drones, scaring people, because social media is famous for being able to pick up on something and scare the hell out of people.”

Heather concurred.

She figures it’s people who fly drones for pleasure and think, “‘Oh, I’ve got this big drone, I’m going to fly it, it’ll be funny and we’ll create a stir, right?’ Somebody can just do that, they can just fly their drone at night and people will see it and report it as a UFO.”

She also wondered if the first spate of sightings fueled more people to look up at the night sky and notice drones and small aircrafts that were often in the sky.

“You know when you see a new car on the road and say, ‘Oh my God, that new Jeep is awesome. I’ve never seen that before,’” she said. “And then all the sudden once you notice it you see it everywhere. This happened to me with the [Tesla] Cybertruck.”

The bottom line for John is that he’s delighted to be in the forefront of the flying car revolution.

“Heather and I went to California to learn how to fly this thing in a simulator, and then brought it home,” he said. “We’ve been flying it since August and having a blast with it, made a lot of new friends, really interesting people who are interested in aviation and agree with us, that this is the wave of the future.”