Mark Stein

Working with Geoff on enflight.com was when I really got to know him well and to truly consider him a friend. He was always floating thoughts on this or that for discussion, and those discussions were never boring.

I was well aware of his flight planning software and connection with DUATS, and jumped at the opportunity to work with Geoff on enflight.com in 1999. So many ideas flowed out of his head! And always in the forefront was the goal of making it easier and safer for pilots to interpret the ever increasing volume of information available.

Of course, he practically invented plain language decoding of FAA weather briefings. But that was never enough. One of his ideas was to allow pilots to specify their own personal weather criteria, and display the briefing information in such a way to call that out. It was my pleasure to actually implement that idea in the Enflight web site code. The result is WXpert, which has a patent application pending. Again, this was not enough. So he applied the same technique to notams.

I accompanied Geoff in the Enflight trade show booth too many times to count: Oshkosh, AOPA, Sun 'n Fun. It always amazed me how many people Geoff knew, and many of them stopped by the booth to say hello. Geoff was in his element there. He passionately believed in doing things to improve pilot safety, and thrived in telling the world about them. I really enjoyed demonstrating the latest additions to Enflight at each show.

Geoff was always looking for ways to help people, again with safety in mind. One project that really stands out in my mind was when Geoff was approached by a guy who wanted to fly his Lancair nonstop from Hilo (Hawaii) to Lakeland (Florida) for Sun 'n Fun. Seems he likes to fly these long routes to get in the record books. This is obviously a very long route, most of it over the Pacific, and getting wind forecast information was both critically important and not readily available for the 25-30 hour flight. Geoff thought this would be an interesting project to take on, mostly to help the Lancair pilot out. But it also served to investigate other sources of weather information which could be used in the Enflight product. The end result was an architecture in Enflight which can digest non-FAA wind forecast sources and integrate them seamlessly into Enflight weather briefings. (Yes, the flight was successful, arriving in Lakeland in just under 25 hours.)

I feel privileged to help Enflight continue to operate in the manner in which Geoff would want.