For what it's worth, I have been told and also read in SN that increased pitch toward the tips will improve line tension overhead. Late this last season I had a prop that worked fairly well, but I really needed some more tension overhead. So I went off the deep end and figured out a method to get some decent results with repitching my one good prop.
The prop was a 12 x 3.75 "red" undercambered 3-blade Brian Eather prop. I measured it at 4.25" pitch for all the blades, over all the stations I measured. Can't recall exactly which stations they were, of course. But I pitched it up
to 4.75" at 8, 10, and 12 on my Prather gauge. This gave excellent results, partly by letting me launch richer, I think. I then reworked the squared tips by sanding a rake into them (used a template) and put a sharp edge on them. This seemed to let the engine spin it up easier, definitely letting me launch richer at the same launch rpm. It really worked nicely...until I buzzed the tips off it on my second official at the Stevenson Memorial Raider's Roundup. So I made a duplicate, and first flight, buzzed the tips off of it the next weekend. Lesson learned: extra ground clearance is good!
What Howard didn't divulge is that Igor used hollow carbon props on his latest WC winner. I know Mike Haverly has one from Igor. I held it in my hand, and it's hollow, at least in the hub. Mike "proved" that! Alan and Chris are working on foam cored CF props, but I'm not sure how far they've got their program on that. While their standard props are ok for IC, I don't think the hollow ones are IC suitable. I don't want to fly with electrons.
Steve