Through the Fog

Most air travelers have never heard of Gilfillan Brothers Inc., a small, bustling Los Angeles electronics and plane parts manufacturer. But all over the world, U.S. airmen know Gilfillan's gadget--the G.C.A. (ground-controlled approach) equipment for blind landings. At Berlin's Tempelhof Airdrome, two of Gilfillan's G.C.A. units are bringing in Allied transports through all kinds of weather. At Gander, Newfoundland, G.C.A. is guiding in U.S. Air Force and commercial planes. At New York's La Guardia Field, Chicago's Municipal Airport, and Washington's National Airport, G.C.A. approaches are routine in thick weather.

Impressed by the 300,000 instrument landings with G.C.A., the U.S. Air Force this week gave Gilfillan Brothers a new $6,000,000 contract for 30 additional installations. (The Air Force now operates 92.) By year's end, Gilfillan expected to triple its gross (from $4,600,000 to $13 million), boost employment from 700 to 1 ,000.

Stay Small. Growth alone has never interested Gilfillan's mild, sprightly President Sennet Gilfillan, 58 (his ailing brother, Jay, 54, co-owner, is inactive). Says Gilfillan: "If you stay small, you can do a better job. We concentrate on G.C.A. because we like it. We get a kick out of it."

Gilfillan has been getting a kick out of a bewildering mishmash of things since he completed his major in economics at Stanford University in 1912. He started out with a smelter (one employee, a chemist), but when platinum was found in Oregon in 1913 he began using it for contact points for automobile magnetos. World War I found him turning out parts for Jenny trainer-planes, but by 1923 he was one of the nation's first five radio manufacturers. A competitor brought out a vastly improved set and overnight, says Gilfillan cheerfully, "I found I was obsolete."

He began making auto spotlights, small drills and grinders, fractional-horsepower motors; by 1938 he was in electronics and television. In mid-1942, the Air Forces, alarmed by crashes at fogged-in English fields, asked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work out a blind-landing system. They developed the idea with practical help on production problems from Gilfillan engineers. The first G.C.A. was a cumbersome rig, with 705 radio and cathode-ray tubes, but it worked. Gilfillan got a contract to make 112; the Navy ordered another 80 units from a competitor. Gilfillan says he hustled out his 100th unit while his competitor was on his fifth. Yet he charged the Government only a 1.1% profit (virtually a West Coast record in self-denial) and turned back $1,000,000 he had saved it in costs. Now that his wartime competitors have dropped out, Gilfillan finally has the G.C.A. field to itself.

Plan Big. Sennet Gilfillan thinks so much of G.C.A.'s future that he has scrapped $3,000,000 in television work to concentrate on G.C.A. He believes its greatest use will come in relieving traffic congestion at overcrowded airports and eliminating "stacking." Said he: "Ten million dollars worth of units at 50 major U.S. airports could save the airlines $40 million a year [twice what they lost in 1947] in gas bills and revenue lost in canceled flights."

He has had to fight both the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which likes the cheaper Instrument Landing System, and some airline pilots, who prefer I.L.S. because they operate it and do not have to entrust their planes to G.C.A. ground crews. The airlift has waked up CAA, which has ordered eight G.C.A. units, will soon ask for bids on 30 more. Gilfillan hopes to win over the airline boys soon. His latest G.C.A. model has eliminated the ground crew. Completely automatic, it can be tuned to the plane's own automatic pilot, land the plane without any help from the cockpit.

A G.C.A. unit at $225,000 is far more expensive than an I.L.S. installation at $70,000. But, says Gilfillan, "if you bring in one plane which otherwise could not land safely then you have paid for your existence."

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