Our Story

How It Started

Bill Stevens grew up as the son of a military officer — the kind of kid who started with Cox control-line ARFs at age ten and never quite got the flying bug out of his system. There was a stint with model rocketry alongside his dad, then RC cars, then the usual detour through school, career, and the rest of life. He became a GIS mapping engineer with the City of Colorado Springs, taught himself AutoCAD on the job, and somewhere along the way found himself flying radio-controlled helium blimps professionally — the kind that drift above arena floors and concert stages for advertising. Above Colorado Avalanche games. At shows for Linkin Park, the Rolling Stones, and the B-52’s. For corporate clients like MetLife and Sun Microsystems. On the ice at Colorado College and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

That sounds like a hobby. It turned into a company.

Along the way, Bill fell in with a remarkable group of retired engineers, military personnel, and enthusiasts in the Colorado Springs area who would profoundly shape what Stevens Aeromodel became. These were people with deep roots in model airplane design and manufacturing — many had owned their own model companies, published their own designs, or held world-class credentials in both full-scale and RC flight. They brought decades of knowledge to every conversation, and they were generous with it.

Flying sessions in the park turned into impromptu seminars. Lunches stretched on over vintage publications and fresh design sketches. Bill would leave those gatherings and disappear into his workshop to build whatever had been burning in his head since lunch.

Blue skies, round loops, and safe landings to all of those dear friends — many now passed — who planted the seeds for these flying dreams.

Improving blimp performance in his off-hours using the same AutoCAD skills he’d built at work, Bill connected with a fellow local enthusiast and got his hands on his first laser cutter. The precision was immediately obvious. So was the opportunity. By 2004 he had a second and third laser running, a kit line growing, and a decision to make. Around 2005, he left the city job entirely.

He opened a retail hobby shop and manufacturing warehouse in 2007. Learned what he needed to learn. Closed it in 2011. Came back to what he’d always been best at: designing kits that build well, fly beautifully, and give builders something to be proud of.

What We Make — and Why the Engineering Matters

A Stevens Aeromodel kit goes together with laser-cut precision. The parts interlock. They align themselves. There is no need for building jigs, no elaborate setup before the first piece of balsa touches glue. We built it that way deliberately — not to make building trivial, but to make it accessible.

The history of how we got there matters. Early model kits came as inked balsa sheets — every part cut by hand. Die-cut kits improved on that, but quality was inconsistent; wood density and die tolerances varied. CNC cutting introduced tab-and-notch construction and better part alignment. When laser-cut kits arrived in the early 1990s, they were largely just fancy die-cut kits. No one had yet figured out how to use the laser as a design tool rather than a cutting tool.

We did.

By combining CAD engineering with in-house laser cutting, we developed techniques that hadn’t existed before: instructions etched directly onto parts, tabs tapered so they slide in cleanly with one hand, components designed to fit only in the correct orientation — so the build sequence teaches itself. Because we owned our lasers on-site rather than outsourcing to contract cutters, an idea conceived at midnight could appear in the next production run. Customer feedback reached the factory floor in days, not quarters.

The influence eventually spread. Overseas manufacturers adopted the same interlocking laser-cut techniques — allowing their workers to build straighter, faster, without specialized jigs. We’re proud of that, even if the attribution stayed quiet.

What we’ve always known, and what every one of our builders eventually discovers, is that the building is not the obstacle. The building is the point.

When you pull a foam ARF from its packaging, or unbox a wooden ready-to-fly made somewhere with questionable supply chains, you have no skin in the game. There’s always something to blame on the vendor. The CG is off. The finish isn’t what the photos showed. The control throws aren’t right. The criticism comes easy because the investment was zero.

The fellow who walks into our shop carrying one of our kits — wings maybe not perfectly straight, covering a little wrinkled, color choices that suggest more enthusiasm than artistic deliberation — that builder will tell you, with complete conviction, about the impeccable flight characteristics of his airplane. His eyes are lit up. He is overflowing with pride and ownership in what he built.

No ARF customer has ever come into our shop with that look on their face.

That builder with the twisted frame is a modeler on his way to becoming a better one. He’s a genuine enthusiast. He is our customer. He is who Stevens Aeromodel and balsabuilder champion.

Over the past two decades, Stevens Aeromodel kits have been built and flown on every continent — throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia. What started in a Colorado Springs workshop is now a globally recognized standard in laser-cut balsa model airplanes.

The Magazine We Had to Create

In 2015, while every other voice in the hobby was chasing YouTube subscribers and digital ad revenue, we went the other direction.

We partnered with Kris Cartwright to launch balsabuilder magazine — an advertising-free, subscriber-funded periodical devoted entirely to the craft of building. No ad pages. No filler. Every issue themed, cohesive, and instructive — built around one or two plans-based model airplane builds, surrounded by the kind of foundational builder knowledge that used to take years of wading through monthly advertiser drip to find.

We were the first US model aviation magazine to ship full-size printed plans with every issue — something that had only been done across the pond in the UK. Each issue was a small education. Contributors included Don DeLoach, Mark Young, Mark Covington, and John McGrath — people who knew the craft and were willing to share it properly.

Kris eventually had to step back due to family health matters. Bill took over as editor and chief designer. The magazine was distributed worldwide and produced work we remain genuinely proud of. But it was a labor of love that pulled hard against our core kit design work, and eventually the honest decision was to fold the balsabuilder spirit back into Stevens Aeromodel — where it guides everything we do to this day.

While the publication remains dormant — a labor of love we continue to revisit — the mission isn’t.

Harper’s Library

There is a weatherproof storage container sitting at our flying field east of Colorado Springs. Inside it, organized with the care they deserve, are decades of model aviation magazines and books — a collection that dates from the 1930s to the present day.

They belonged to Harper C. Daniell.

Harper was born in 1944, a lifelong aviation enthusiast who collected everything related to radio control model aviation. His crown jewel was his library — magazines, books, periodicals spanning nearly a century of the hobby. Bill knew Harper as a friend and mentor. Breakfast conversations with Harper meant research brought from the library, articles from decades past, stories about what model aviation had meant to an entire generation.

Harper passed on March 25, 2023, at age 78. His family was converting his home to a bed and breakfast. The memorabilia had been staged for the dumpster.

Bill and his team rushed over. They recovered what they could. The library was the centerpiece — the thing that couldn’t go. They reached out to local libraries and aviation museums. None were interested.

There was talk of digitizing it. But there’s something irreplaceable about slightly musty paper held in the hand, from almost a century ago, carrying the passion of people who were just as obsessed with flight as you are. That’s not a scan. That’s a connection. It’s a kind of euphoria only a true model aviation enthusiast would recognize.

So they bought a large weatherproof container with a man door and a window, unpacked Harper’s collection, and organized it properly — with the help of Kris Cartwright, fellow enthusiast and former editor of balsabuilder magazine. It now sits at the flying field — a private collection, available by appointment to fellow enthusiasts — a personal time capsule and, without hyperbole, the gem of model aviation history on the Front Range of Colorado.

Memory Eternal, Harper Daniell.

Under Threat — Why We Fight

The model aviation community predates manned flight. For over a century, Free Flight, Control Line, and RC modelers have operated safely in US airspace — not because no one was watching, but because a community with genuine standards, real safety practices, and deep love for the hobby policed itself. The Academy of Model Aeronautics has set that tone since its founding, and continues to be the voice of the traditional modeling community.

The rise of consumer quadcopters changed the landscape. What the broader public called “drones” attracted a new wave of operators — some responsible, many not — flying near airports, over crowds, and in ways that caught the attention of legislators looking for a regulatory response. Add the documented use of commercial hobby hardware in conflict zones overseas, and the pressure on lawmakers to act became irresistible.

The result was sweeping regulation with little regard for who was actually in the air. Well-funded corporate lobbying from big-box retailers and military contractors seeking to carve out low-altitude airspace for drone deliveries and security operations added momentum. The traditional model aviation community — with its century-long safety record — got swept up in the regulatory response it never earned.

Since October 2023, any model aircraft weighing more than 250 grams — barely over half a pound, well within the weight range of most park flyers with motor, battery, and receiver installed — must broadcast FAA Remote ID. Fly outside a designated FRIA (FAA-Recognized Identification Area) without it and you are in violation. Grandpa and his grandson flying balsa at the local park face compliance requirements that would have seemed science fiction a decade ago.

Meanwhile, a Part 103 powered ultralight — a full-scale piloted aircraft — operates under less regulatory scrutiny than that balsa airplane.

For context: there are more documented incidents of full-scale aircraft striking turtles than there are documented incidents involving model airplanes. Let that sink in.

The industry that once supported this hobby has largely collapsed under the combined weight of economic downturns, regulatory uncertainty, and the cultural shift toward pre-manufactured digital entertainment. Tower Hobbies — gone. Great Planes — gone. Hobby shops nationwide — shuttered. Kit manufacturers — dark. The plans and instructions for kits that no longer exist now circulate in scraps online, often illegally, because nowhere official will preserve them.

Stevens Aeromodel is a member of the AMA Government Advocacy Coalition. Alongside the AMA and fellow enthusiasts, we advocate for safety, for local club participation, and for the voices of modelers before governing bodies. The advocacy effort has secured FRIA designation for flying sites across the country — a genuine win — and the fight continues.

We are not going quietly.

The Passing of the Torch

You don’t have to look far to see what’s at stake. Watch a grandfather walk into a hobby shop with his grandson, both of them studying the kit boxes on the wall, talking about what they’re going to build together. Not a video game. Not a YouTube video. A thing they will hold in their hands, glue together at the kitchen table, cover with film, take to the field, and fly — together.

That’s a murmur, not a scream. It happens quietly, repeatedly, throughout the year. Older builders reaching back to hand something to the next generation. Not just a kit — the knowledge of how to build it, the patience it requires, the pride that comes only from making something yourself.

We are honored to be one of the first places they turn when they want to ignite that spark.

There is a fundamental difference in how you feel about something you built versus something you bought. Creativity is not a feature of some people — it is a feature of all people. Building feeds something in the human soul that no subscription service, no algorithm, no ready-to-fly toy retailed from shops overseas with names you cannot pronounce has ever touched.

No amount of social media likes will ever produce the dopamine hit of taking something from the building board to the flying field and back home again.

Build It.