I'm sure glad I didn't enter THIS contest.

ALL events were combined piston & electric.
ALL prizes were won by electric.

Who would have guessed that motors that can run backwards, stop & start and never quit would win ALL the carrier events.

Instead of "combined gas & electric" you might as well say, "Electric carrier, donations from piston flyers accepted".

I think the interpretation of the contest report is entirely wrong and people reading it could easily be misled. First, one should note that most of the flights were Electric. Art Johnson is the only entry who flew only gas flights and he no longer works hard at getting his stuff to work but rather participates with whatever he has in a relaxed way and his scores reflect that approach. My scores reflect that I do work hard at it but still my best Electric scores are 60-70 points less than my best gas scores in the corresponding class. I am trying hard to improve my Electric scores but it is going to be very difficult to make them as good as gas scores and may never happen.
I would like to say that Electric is more reliable than gas but this contest saw power system problems for both Bill and Mike, so the reliability is not a clear advantage.
None of my AMA-class electrics (or gas models, for that matter) have reverse rotation, so the reversibility of electric rotation is not a significant advantage.
Stopping an electric motor in flight is a great way to go unstable and crash, something that doesn't happen with gas as there is a safe lower limit to rpm when set up normally.
So the mentioned advantages to electric are not significant advantages at all. As usual, the people winning trophies are the ones who worked hard at it and had their act together on the particular day of the contest, and perhaps had an extra share of luck that day.

Pete

Thanks a lot Mike.   Also thanks Pete for the clarification.  My self I need to get out and fly more.  Been reading Eric's hints on carrier and need to start applying it.