You really should give the 3S a try, makes a big difference power wise. I haven't tried the slow fly props and I could easily be wrong but I thought they were more for the slow flying type of park fliers. I was eye-ballin them at the LHS but went for the thin "E" type instead, just looked like more of a performance type prop to me, but again; I could easily be wrong.
I picked up one of those "Wicked electric scimitar props"(7x5) and it does indeed look wicked, very stiff and wide cord. Going to give it a try as well.
http://www.stevensaero.com/EMP-Electric-Scimitar-Wicked-p-1-c-322.htmlDon't feel bad about your SNAFU on the e-flight timer, on my first one I had the ESC hooked up to the retract plug and couldn't figure out why my motor took so long to start.
Please post back up here and let us know how it works out with the slow fly props!
ETA: Ok this is by far probably not too accurate but I went back and checked my 3 videos and tried to get an idea on the lap times. It seems with the stock 3 blade/2S pack they were close to 7-8 seconds* and on the 3 blade/3S pack they were around 6* seconds and with the 8x4/3S they seem to be around 5.5* or so.
*-Keep in mind all of these flights were done with the throttle at around 60-75% or somewhere in that range as I forgot I had turned it down for the first flight and never turned it back up for the rest of the flights.