In honor of the Wright stuff

A few months ago, Barth, 47, tied his idea to the approaching 100th anniversary of the first flight of the Wright Brothers. The combination was irresistible for the former flight instructor. He calculated that the series of flights would take about 10 hours, the amount of daylight in mid-December.

"So the fact that it was on the edge of doability was part of the appeal," Barth said.

Weather permitting, Barth, of Sudbury, and copilot Bill Herp, 41, of Lexington, plan to make the flight Wednesday in a four-seat Cessna 172SP Skyhawk. They will take off from Hanscom Field in Bedford early in the morning and hit all corners of the state before returning to Hanscom late in the afternoon.

The itinerary calls for 40 landings, including at airfields in Marshfield, Plymouth, Hanson, Mansfield and Norwood. The journey includes all paved airports open to the public, but excludes grass runways and military facilities.

The voyage, which aviation experts in the area believe is unprecedented, has been given a special designation by the Federal Aviation Administration: MassFlight 100.

The pilots are using the trip to raise money for the Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter in Boston. Barth and Herp suggest that people donate $40, or $1 per landing, to the Pine Street Inn through their website, www.massflight.com.

But the main draw is the voyage itself.

"When you get past the age of 40, and you've got a family, and you've got obligations, and you've got a schedule full of not very interesting things to do, it's tough to find an adventure," Barth said.

The marathon trip has been supported by fellow aviators, Barth said.

Several aviation experts suggested the voyage may buoy interest in the many small airports that dot the state.

"I guess a lot of people look at airports as places for rich people to hang out or for corporations to store their equipment," said Chris Hyldburg, chief pilot at Alpha One Flight at Plymouth Municipal Airport, which operates a flight school and also provides fuel and maintenance for aircraft. "But it's really a community in itself. And we try to bring more people into that community."

If Barth and Herp need fuel or maintenance when they stop in Plymouth (the landing there is scheduled for about 9 a.m.), Hyldburg said, his company will provide it free of charge. "We're going to make sure they have what they need when they arrive here," he said.

He and Herp said they have long admired the Wright Brothers. Barth said he read extensively about their achievements as a teenager, which helped inspire him to become a licensed pilot at age 17.

The trip by Bartha and Herp is perhaps the most ambitious of the local celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the first controlled flight of an engine-powered machine carrying a human being, in Kitty Hawk, N.C.The Wrights' first flight, by Orville, at 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 17, 1903, covered just 120 feet in 12 seconds. But on the fourth flight that day, by Wilbur, their craft traveled 852 feet and stayed aloft for 59 seconds, and the modern age of aviation was born.

In November, Mansfield Municipal Airport hosted about 400 fourth-graders, giving them tours of the facility and letting them get inside an airplane, said David Dinneen, co-owner of King Aviation, a flight school at the airport. The town's Airport Commission and public school system split the cost of transporting the students to the airport, he said.

Dinneen said he's looking forward to Barth and Herp's flight, which is scheduled to reach Mansfield at about 9:30 a.m.

"I hope it raises awareness to the fact that aviation is very versatile and is a very viable form of transportation and an integral part of today's society," Dinneen said.

Barth is president and chief executive officer of a technology marketing firm he founded in Sudbury. Herp is chairman of an electronic marketing firm he founded in Lexington.

While stable and steady in the air, the Cessna 172 is small, and occupants feel just about any gust of wind, which can make the airplane hop and dip a little, occasionally giving a passenger in the backseat the feeling of riding a rollercoaster, as it did during a test flight a few weeks ago.

The advantage of a small plane is it can land and take off from relatively small airfields, like most of the airports in Massachusetts.

Wednesday's journey would be impossible with an airplane significantly larger than the Cessna 172, Barth said.

Barth said he hopes to inspire others approaching middle age.

"Gee, if I were to inspire some other 40-plus guy to push themselves a bit, that would be the coolest," Barth said. "We've become a flabby society that becomes suffocated by routine."

"I think a lot of my counterparts, their idea of guts is using a five-iron to get out of the sand trap. I'm not afraid to put myself out there, and I love a good adventure."