Copyright 2002. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) - A pair of modern-day Wright brothers from Georgia are out to set an aviation record commemorating the centennial of the original Wright brothers' first powered flight.

Jerry Wright landed on this resort island Wednesday as part of a quest to take off and land at every public airport with a paved runway in the continental United States - all 3,805 of them.

The journey will end in December of next year at Kitty Hawk, N.C., to mark man's first powered flight made by Orville and Wilbur Wright. Jerry Wright's brother Jimmy doesn't accompany him in the four-passenger Piper Cherokee, but he helps with maintenance and ground work.

The brothers, from Cornelia, Ga., covered that state last month. They landed at 19 South Carolina airports Thursday before finishing with a stop on Hilton Head. They plan to finish visiting all the South Carolina airports by this weekend.
"I've got one record now, Georgia, and Saturday I should be finished with South Carolina," Jerry Wright said Wednesday. "This is my 20th landing today. I think that's enough."

The trip is partly sponsored by Condor Aircraft Tires and Flightcom, a maker of communication devices and headsets for aviation. Jerry Wright is also the inventor of a radio-controlled fishing boat for the handicapped and has lived off the income from his patent for eight years.

Wright doesn't know whether he and his brother are related to the more famous Wright brothers. He does know ancestors of both pairs of brothers arrived in this country from England about the same time and both changed the spelling of their names from Wrighte to Wright.

The plane carries a flight recorder to document the trips and the modern-day Wrights have agreed to offer their plane to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum after finishing their journey.

"There are not a whole lot of countries in the world where you could do something like this - fly an airplane pretty much whenever and wherever you want to," Wright said. "Since 9-11, American aviation and general aviation have taken some raps, but I think the public really doesn't understand how important aviation is to the this country."