The 2021 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships wrapped up at the Salina Regional Airport, Kansas on Friday, September 24. Congratulations to Unlimited category champion Rob Holland who retained his title of U.S. National Unlimited Aerobatic Champion title for the 10th time!
"It’s been a long road and a lot (whole lot) of hard work, but I just won my 10th consecutive US National Aerobatic Championship," Rob said. "I can’t thank my Sponsors, Family and Friends enough for their never ending support, love, and encouragement."
The long road began when Rob started flying in 1992. In his earlier years Rob flight instructed, towed banners, flew for a commuter airline, ferried aircraft and also flew as a corporate pilot. He has amassed over 14,000 flight hours.
Rob always had his sights on airshows and built up his acrobatic experience concurrently with his other aviation endeavors. He started his airshow career in 2002 and quickly distinguished himself by blazing a trail of innovation, developing aerobatic maneuvers never seen before.
Rob started teaching aerobatics at Mike Goulian's school. Mike is a 3-time U.S. National Unlimited aerobatic Champion as well as a well-known air show pilot and Red Bull Air Racer. Through Goulian's school they would take aerobatic students to regional contests. In 2001 Rob was introduced to competition aerobatics at IAC chapter 35's contest in New England, where he competed in the Sportsman category and had a great learning experience in a Decathlon. "It went horrible, but it was a lot of fun. I did the first figure right, then I forgot the second figure so I did the whole rest of the sequence backwards," Rob said.
He was so excited about the competition experience that he wrote himself a little note that day that he wanted to win the U.S. National Championships with the next ten years. It was 10 years and 2 months later that he won his first U.S. National Unlimited Aerobatic Champion title in 2011 at North Regional Texas Airport, Denison Texas.
Read the article about Rob's first win as U.S. National Unlimited Aerobatic Champion in December 2011 issue of Sport Aerobatics beginning on page 4.
From the 2019 April issue of Sport Aerobatics, "“I enjoy the discipline of it [aerobatics]. I enjoy it as a way to measure my skills, and to try and be constantly better than I was the day before.” This frame of mind continued to drive Rob through nearly two decades of success as an aerobatic competitor and as an air show performer.
“Aerobatics is not a defensive sport,” he maintains. “There’s nothing I can do that’s going to affect how somebody else flies their airplane. I’ve never put the pressure on myself, like having to get so ma
ny wins or anything like that. Instead, I’ve always approached each day with a goal to fly better today than I did yesterday. That’s it. And then the next day I want to fly better than I did the day before. I love practicing. I love self-improvement. I love the discipline of all this."
You have to think that after you’ve strung up four or five consecutive championship titles, there starts to be pressure to keep it going. Even to target the record. For people who aim for the top, staying at the top often generates a lot of pressure. Here, again, there is no pressure to be seen in Rob as he approached, and then broke, Leo Loudenslager’s record of seven national championships -Evan Peers, Editor and Author
“I knew it was out there. I guess when I got to six I realized wow, if I do this again I could tie the record,” he said. “But that wasn’t really the goal. People ask me all the time, ‘How much longer are you going to do this?’ And my standard answer, which is absolutely true, is ‘As long as it’s fun.’ And it’s still fun. So, I don’t keep competing to try to break any record, I keep competing because this is a part of my life, and this is what I enjoy doing. It’s fun! I guess it kind of became real right around the sixth win. I tried not to put a lot of pressure on myself for the seventh one. I was absolutely excited when I won.”
