IT WAS THE SPRING of 1979. Robert Parke, then FLYING's editor, was in Los Angeles. His next stop was Reno, and of course I offered to fly him there. My homemade airplane, Melmoth, had by then successfully crossed both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and so the intrepid Parke, who had piloted B-17s over Europe in World War Ⅱ , was willing to chance it. It was a clear, calm day. We climbed out of Whiteman Airport (KWHP) and through the Newhall Pass, turning northwestward toward Gorman. I leveled out at 10,500 feet. Mount Pinos crept past our left wing and the vast flatness of the San Joaquin Valley lay fading into the haze before us. How do you know something is wrong? Sometimes it's obvious: a big noise, shaking, smoke, pieces flying off. But sometimes it's so subtle that you ask yourself if you're imagining things. There was something different about the hum of the engine. Crossing oceans, out of sight of land for 10 hours, I had become intimately acquainted with automatic rough. I knew how an anxious mind could tease ominous signals out of the engine's chaotic noise. But now the engine was not rough-it was just different.
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