"We've been successful in finding companies whose stocks are dramatically undervalued compared to potential rewards," Hutt said. "There is a lot of unknown upside potential."

Still, he said, it's a "show me" situation. "If they misstep again, they're gone," he said. "I don't mean bankrupt; I mean bought. They're not going out of business, but if everything messes up and goes wrong, they will be bought."

Technical glitches with the first version of Harmony in 1999 hurt the company's situation on the military side, but Weltsch said the bugs have been worked out with the next generation of Harmony. He's particularly high on both the Harmony 2 product and the EP (short for "environment processor"), which he said have "really rejuvenated" the company.

"I'll put it this way: Any company that goes through the restructuring E&S has gone through, it's all about improving profitability. If they can't do that, I don't know if it can really survive in the long term," Weltsch said. "But it is well-positioned to achieve profitability in the next year. I believe it will."

He thinks E&S has "learned their lessons" and will maintain its technology base to meet customer and potential customer needs.

"Generally, this is a company that has fallen on tough times, but it's done a lot of great work in the last year to recover from that," Weltsch said. "They are in a good position for growth. I expect them to do well in the coming year and improve on the successes they've had in the past year."

Back inside one of those successes, the EP-1000CT pilots can slip through realistic images of mountains, skies and other outdoor features. Night scenes of approaches at Salt Lake City International Airport even include the moving lights of I-15 traffic.

A push of a few buttons brings on the simulated bad weather. A few more takes it away. But, underneath it all, the lay of the land underneath remains the same. It's a staying power Oyler could appreciate.

"Things change very quickly in the advanced-technology business. We're a 35-year-old company, and there aren't very many 35-year-old technology companies," he said.

"That's older than Intel, older than Microsoft. If you go back and put together a list of technology companies that were around back in 1968, there aren't many still left."

---

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com