April 26, 1992

WHEN Jill and Robert Miller signed a contract for a two-bedroom co-op on the East Side of Manhattan just before Thanksgiving they thought they would be in their new home by now. But the Millers are still in their rental apartment because the lender from whom they sought a mortgage took so long to handle their application. They finally got a loan from another bank and closed on the apartment at the end of March. They will be moving in after renovations have been completed.

IN the chess games advertised as the National Basketball Association playoffs, it's now the Pistons' move. After the Knicks dominated Friday night's opener, 109-75, the Pistons' coach, Chuck Daly, understood the situation. "We'll have to make other decisions," he said.

From 35,000 feet over the Arizona desert, you can't even spot it on the ground. But you can spot it on the map. It is one of the hundreds of radio navigation checkpoints that mark your path circling the globe. And from the pilot's seat in the Gulfstream IV jet, which he built and tested and flew to 35 international speed records, Allen E. Paulson once more mingled two of his passions in life: fast airplanes and fast horses. He made a note of the name of the checkpoint so he could one day bestow it on one of his race horses. He had already done it for horses named Dinard and Cudas. And after he bought a weanling in Kentucky for $350,000, he named the baby horse for the checkpoint in the Arizona desert: Arazi.

Mike Richter, a somewhat surprising choice in goal for the Rangers, shut out the Devils, 3-0, tonight at Byrne Meadowlands Arena, tying the first-round National Hockey League playoff series at two games each. As so often happens in post-season play, the big scorers were shut down and the grinding role players got the big goals. After two scoreless periods, Jan Erixon and Paul Broten beat Chris Terreri early in the third period. When the Devils pulled Terreri for an extra attacker in the final two minutes, Mike Gartner scored into the open net.

An American military transport plane flying off Peru's coast was fired on by two Peruvian fighter planes Friday afternoon, resulting in the loss of one crewman, but Washington and Lima appeared today to be trying to minimize confrontation over the incident. American officials in Washington expressed concern and said the incident, which involved a C-130 transport plane on a routine counterdrug surveillance mission, was being investigated.