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After 17 years as a social studies teacher at a small, rural Junior High School in central Texas, I retired at the end of the 2016 school year. I started that career at age 45. Prior to that, I was a professional painter and prior to that, a sheet-metal mechanic/tinsmith. I am married, and my wife Jackie and I have two children, Ann, 42, a financial advisor and Carson, 40, a Mechanical Engineer.
Our kids have now provided us with two grandsons, Ann and her husband Robert had a baby boy on August 11 2014, John Carlos ("Johnny") Huerta and Carson's wife Amanda delivered their baby boy, Sullivan ("Sul" or "Sully") on the following December 18. Needless to say, they are both beautiful babies and yes, the grandparents are somewhat STOKED, lol!
I am glad to add an update. My first grand-daughter, Nora Wade Brantley, was born Nov. 8, 2016. Of course, she is beautiful (looks a lot like her brother Sullivan). Just one more blessing in my life!
And yet another update- our second granddaughter, Chloe Marie Huerta, was born on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 20017 and now is 4 years old and counting...
My other hobbies include shooting and collecting firearms, music, reading and hot-rod cars and motorcycles. I also assist (read: doing the heavy lifting, lol) with my wife's antique business. We bought a brand new 47 HP 4WD Kubota L4701 tractor in Sept. '16 to use on our ranch in the country, "Brokenoak". I've been busy and having a lot of fun as a Country Squire out there. Yes, life can get rather hectic for ol' Squire Brantley! š
When I was 13-14 years old, my family and I lived in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, where my Dad worked for ALCOA ( in Geelong 1966-67). My passion then was slot car racing! I had two commercial tracks within 100 meters/yards of our house. Oh man, did I have fun over there! Hey wait, that was over 50 years ago?!?! Wow, where did the time go? š
I bought this old Fujimi 1/48 kit at a model close-out at a Michael's store many years ago. Since I only paid a few dollars for it, when I finally got around to building the plane, 15-20 years ago, I decided to try a bit of customizing. [...]
Well, yesterday was a busy day at the Cameron airport. I finally had an opportunity to spend a couple hours out there and photographed three more planes. These were the very first digital pics ever of this one, a Republic P-47D [...]
As designers will tell you, if it looks right, it is right. Well, the North American F-86 Sabre just really looks right. Really right. With its sleek swept wings the Sabre was an elegant warplane. North American had started the XP-86 [...]
The Curtis P-40B and the Mitsubishi A6M5 Type 0 in 1/48 scale. Both of these were built at least 20 years ago but I only got them out to the airport last year for a photo session. Both reveal my limitations as a model builder back then, [...]
This is my 1/48 MiG-15 from the old 1987 Monogram kit that also had an F-86. It is finished in Floquil Old Silver, with some panels done in other shades of silver or polishing to various degrees. It carries the markings of Russian Capt. [...]
Maybe it's my age, well, I was born in 1952 after all, but I really like the jets from the '50s. To me, they just look like a jet fighter is supposed to. It seems that to aircraft designers back then, there was no limit to their [...]
I started work on this airplane about 5-6 years ago. I stopped working on scale models for several reasons but this Sea Fury and the Mirage F-1 that I did as a CSAF plane were about half-finished and they taunted me to complete them for [...]
Here are a few pics of my only armor models. One is the Tamiya Panther Pzkpfw. V Ausf. A and the other is the Italeri M24 Chaffee light tank. Both are 1/35 scale. These are the only two I've built so far and I think they are easier [...]
This is the old Revell kit, from 1990. I built it several years ago, and recently got around to photographing her at the airport. I did use an aftermarket decal set, the SuperScaleInternational set 48-346. It's pretty much built OOB, [...]
Well, how about another āwhat ifā history project? I hope you donāt mind. This started off as just a regular build of the Hasegawa Kyushu J7W1 Shinden. This aircraft had long fascinated me, with itās unorthodox canard design and [...]
