The home page photo is from a 2004 trip to Antarctica. Highlights were standing on the continent, giving us all 7 continents in the world and scuba diving there. This is Neko Harbor,
an inlet of the Antarctic Peninsula on Andvord Bay, situated on the west coast of Graham Land. It was discovered by Belgian explorer Adrien de Gerlache during the early 20th century.
It was named for a Scottish whaling boat, the Neko, which operated in the area between 1911 and 1924.
My name is Peter and this personal website contains a collection of my online interests. I retired in 2019 from UCSB where I was a computer researcher for public health, specifically
digitizing the birth certificates of California. I am enjoying my retirement and now spend my time with housekeeping, cooking, shopping, gardening, pet care, golf, poker, TV, movies,
gaming and travelling.
Email – petermschen@gmail.com
Here is the story of the website name. So how did this bizarre
combination of helicopter and alligator come to be? Well, it all started back
in 1997 when the family went to New Orleans
for a 2 week vacation. We all went on one
of those bayou tours. They fed chicken to the gators right off the side of the
boat and we saw a BIG one! Afterwards, they had all different
sizes of real gator heads for sale at the gift store, so I bought
one of the smaller ones. Not having a good spot for it at home, it ended up in
one of our vases. Last year, my wife says,
"When are you going to get rid of that blasted gator
head?" So being in full heli addiction mode
then, the wheels started churning away. The size was just about perfect to
stick it on
the front of my Thunder Tiger Raptor helicopter canopy. So I screwed it into a wood block through the canopy, but it
ended up being too heavy. But the idea was born, and I found a
rubber gator that was the perfect size at one of those nature
stores. Next I got a new canopy and used some auto bondo to fill out the windshield area. Then I painted it
and attached
the head/tail/feet. For the feet, I removed the skids and the
rubber stretched over the struts to hold them on. And the rest, as they say, is
history. I brought it to fly demos at science
fairs for the kids at local schools and turn some heads at a few
nearby funflys.
