AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2018 - 72

A JUNE 2018 TEST using the same airplane showed that a conven-

tional Sensenich two-blade propeller consistently produced more
thrust than the single-blade Everel.

"IT ONLY KILLS HALF AS MANY
BUGS, SO IF YOUR OBJECTIVE IS TO KILL BUGS, IT'S A
FAILURE."
-LARRY KROPP

with the prop mounted onto friend Mark Stewart's
J-2, disaster struck.
Steve Krog, a well-known Cub aficionado who also
runs a flight school specializing in Cubs, was invited
to take the airplane up for a quick circuit around the
field. Without performing his usual preflight check,
Krog hastily climbed in. As he later reflected, "I broke
my cardinal rule number one-familiarize thyself with
the airplane!"
Kropp remembered sitting with Breiner beside the
runway watching Krog's takeoff run, which was taking far too long. "We stood up and were frantically
waving to make him stop," Kropp said. To no avail.
The airplane lifted off anemically. A stuck valve crippled the number 3 cylinder. By the time Krog realized
the predicament he was in, it was too late. The airplane stalled and crashed into a neighbor's backyard.
Luckily, Krog emerged unscathed, but Eckhart's propeller blade was shattered.
Breiner felt sick about destroying Eckhart's propeller. The incident, said Kropp, left Breiner "in a daze
for a while." Determined to return Eckhart's propeller to her, Breiner found an Everel blade without a
hub and combined it with the surviving hub from
Eckhart's original. For himself, Breiner found a broken Everel prop that had a serviceable hub, then hired
a carver to make a blade using Eckhart's propeller as a
template. Kropp machined custom parts that needed
replacement in the hub.
With an enthusiasm bordering on obsession,
Breiner set out to learn the secrets of the Everel.
He did a variety of tests on the new prop to evaluate the performance of the propeller, comparing
climb rates, cruise speeds, and takeoff runs between
the single-blade and two-blade propellers. Kropp set
up a boom extending from below the Cub's nose on
which they mounted a camera that looked through
the propeller disk, to see if they could capture the
propeller's pitch change in flight.
At Bermudian Valley, Breiner's J-2 with the oneblade Everel became a kind of airfield mascot. Eager
to share this odd bit of aviation history, Breiner invited
other pilots to drop by and fly his airplane, offer their
thoughts, or just hang out. And despite failing health,
Breiner continued tinkering and making plans.
A FAILURE?

During a visit to Bermudian Valley, Kropp attached
a 100-pound scale between his truck's trailer hitch
and the Cub's tailwheel to compare thrust levels
between the Everel and the standard Sensenich twoblade prop. (Breiner, 92, was in failing health and got
updates at home. He died shortly thereafter, in August
2018.) As pilot John Machamer manipulated the
controls, Kropp noted the numbers through various

72 | AOPA PILOT November 2018

AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2018

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