ORIGINAL: Destiny-RCU
being that I know little about prop design. Also makes me curious, is there room for "out of the box" thinking with making a prop? Or is what we use today as far as it can go?
If you are participating in competition or speed trials.... dealing with rpm, tip speed, aircraft design for this specialty application, and aircraft flight regeims that are at the extreme, there are a probably a number of designs to be tried yet. If you are interested in some prop theory, look up supercool props (do a google search). Some good info there.
For sport use.... don't give it a further thought. Use an off the shelf APC standard blade or D1 series on the Q-500, and you will be much, much better off.
Just in closing here... you can get a far greater speed increase with drag reduction and refinements on an aircraft, than you can achieve with tweeking a prop. For a Q-500, take it for what it is... a box with wings.