Howard Ward's Gamco Growth Fund includes tech names you'd expect, like Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) and Google ( GOOG - news - people ). Ward is also betting heavily on a sector not typically associated with growth--aerospace. What attracts Ward is the industry's long lead times, global reach and the fact that the aerospace cycle is starting to take off.

"It's pretty straightforward," he says. "If you're looking for strong EPS [earnings per share] growth in 2011 and 2012, with a high degree of certainty, aerospace fits the bill."

No question, aerospace can be bumpy. Between the bottom of the last aerospace cycle in 2003 and the peak six years later, annual commercial airplane deliveries rose nearly 60% to 914 craft. Now growing again, deliveries should rise around 8% annually over the next three years, analysts predict.

The driving force is demand from emerging markets. Boeing ( BA - news - people ) projects demand out to 2029 and expects deliveries to the Asia-Pacific region to triple. Throw in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa and more than half the world's new aircraft are likely to end up in developing countries.

Ward, 54, has a history of investing against the grain. That includes a 1981 episode when he convinced his father to buy five-year Treasurys paying 16% against the advice of a local banker. Interest rates soon fell, and the Treasurys looked like a stroke of genius.

"My dad was tickled pink," Ward says.

Ward managed money at Scudder, Stevens & Clark for a dozen years before joining Gamco, where he has run the $522 million (assets) growth fund the past 15 years. During his tenure the fund has trailed its category benchmark by about 0.33 percentage points annually, which says more about its lofty 1.53% fee than about Ward's stock picks.

Ward believes the best way to play aerospace is via parts suppliers, who sell to new aircraft makers and to airlines buoyed by rising traffic. One Ward favorite is Precision Castparts ( PCP - news - people ), which makes jet engine components, including those for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, now scheduled for delivery in early 2011. That, in turn, should loosen the bottleneck that developed in the distribution of Precision Castpart's fasteners, says Cowen & Company analyst Cai von Rumohr.

Ward also owns Rockwell Collins ( COL - news - people ), a maker of avionics and flight controls that earns about half its revenues from commercial aerospace and half from defense. It may be spared some of the pain from U.S. defense cuts by the critical nature of some of the systems it provides.

#### Below the Radar

BOEING AND AIRBUS ARE BETTER KNOWN, BUT THESE COMPANIES COULD BENEFIT FROM DEMAND FOR BOTH NEW AND SPARE PARTS AS AIRLINE TRAFFIC TAKES OFF.
| price |  |
Company | Recent | 52-week high | Market value ($MIL) | PEG*
L-3 Communications | $73.27 | $97.81 | $8,288 | 1.0
Moog | 38.41 | 40.21 | 1,743 | 1.12
Spirit AeroSystems | 19.03 | 24.00 | 2,703 | 1.2
Goodrich | 83.16 | 83.99 | 10,426 | 1.4
Precision Castparts | 140.08 | 141.33 | 19,978 | 1.62
Rockwell Collins | 59.87 | 68.04 | 9,411 | 1.7**
Industry average |  |  |  | 1.7
Prices as of Nov. 3. *PEG ratio: Fiscal year 2011 estimated price-to-earnings ratio divided by estimated long-term earnings growth. **Based on fiscal year 2012 estimated price-to-earnings ratio. Source: Interactive Data, Thomson IBES and Thomson Reuters Fundamentals via FactSet Research Systems.