Col. Rohr wrote:
Could you send me the link to the directions how to get to Walts place. I might just atke a weekend and fly over and try to talk with him.
With your last visit do you think he would be open to me using a tape recorder to interview him.
Rob, I've since lost the actual set of directions I used to get there, but I obtained them from a rec.aviation.military post, so a hour on Google ought to yield you some useable results.
As far as an interview...as you can see from my writeup, Mr Soplata is a very "interesting" individual. On one hand he has an unbelievable memory when it comes to the histories of his airplanes, how he got them, and how much he paid. On the other hand, some of the things he says are completely off-the-wall, like how he was planning on putting all of his airplanes back together all by himself. He even told me a story about how he'd been visited by the ghost of the deceased Blue Angel pilot of his F11-F and been given "permission" to posess the wreckage.
Bottom line, Rob, while I'm sure you might get some real gems in an interview, you'd be treated to a lot of chaff, too.
I also did not get the impression that he cared about any publicity, cared at all about securing his place in aviation history, etc etc. I doubt he'd be interested.
That being said...it's sure as hell worth a try. He didn't want to show me a darn thing initially when I visited. I just happened to mention that I flew jets in the AF, and apparently his son is or was both a USAF pilot as well as a pilot for FedEx. Once that was out on the table, he was more than willing to talk -- so perhaps there's a way in, after all.
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