In reply to M1EYP:
May I
recommend http://www.summits.org.uk
I must endorse Tom’s comments. The Summitsbase seems to specialise in niche awards and has an excellent reputation for delivering them. I feel sure that an e-mail to them would result in a new Summit Sloth award (or special endorsement). As far as I’m aware, their awards are free.
73
Richard
G3CWI
In reply to G3CWI:
I must endorse Tom’s comments. The Summitsbase seems to specialise in
niche awards and has an excellent reputation for delivering them. I
feel sure that an e-mail to them would result in a new Summit Sloth
award (or special endorsement). As far as I’m aware, their awards are
free.
Niche award, Richard!!!
Do you know exactly how many activators may lay claim to a Summit Sloth award if it’s regognised? I’ve made 358 S2Ss in 16 months, this programme has been running for 10 years. To catergorise all my hard work, time and damned exspense into a niche award category, quite frankly, is nothing short of insulting…
In reply to 2E0YYY:
By definition it would be a niche award. Don’t blame me for correct English usage!
73
Richard
G3CWI
In reply to G3CWI:
By definition it would be a niche award. Don’t blame me for correct
English usage!
You didn’t answer my question!
Mike
2E0YYY
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Do you know exactly how many activators may lay claim to a Summit Sloth award if it’s recognised?
The number will be considerably less than the total number of activators. Thus by any definition it would be a niche award i.e. one most likely to be claimed by a specialist subset of activators - such as yourself.
I am uncertain as to why that is in the least bit insulting to anyone?
73
Richard
G3CWI
In reply to G3CWI:
Do you know exactly how many activators may lay claim to a Summit
Sloth award if it’s recognised?The number will be considerably less than the total number of
activators. Thus by any definition it would be a niche award i.e. one
most likely to be claimed by a specialist subset of activators - such
as yourself.
In other words, you don’t know the number.
I am uncertain as to why that is in the least bit insulting to anyone?
I’ll concede, that I should have chosen a different word.
Mike
2E0YYY
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Fantastic achievement Mike. Is that VHF Summit Sloth?
73 Chris M0RSF
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Mike
I don’t need to know the number for what I wrote to be correct English usage. I don’t know the number and neither do you but niche it is, like it or not! Being a radio amateur and doing SOTA is hardly “mainstream”, that’s what makes it special. Surely we can agree on that?
73
Richard
G3CWI
In reply to G3CWI:
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Mike
I don’t need to know the number for what I wrote to be correct English
usage. I don’t know the number and neither do you but niche it is,
like it or not!
Richard, I’ve never claimed to know the numbers. Both you and Tom, decided to poo poo, Summit Sloth, damning it without offering one shred of evidence as to why this should be so! As there is no facility in the Database to tick a box for a S2S contact it’s unlikely the true numbers will ever be known.
However, in this thread alone there are three other likely candiates, G1INK, M1MAJ and MW0IML and possibly Tom M1EYP too. I suspect there are plenty more activators who will be scrutinising their SOTA logs closely, trust me, Summit Sloth is very difficult to achieve (surely we can agree on this) and it’s only right it should be recgognised “officially” and not dumped into some niche catagory.
Being a radio amateur and doing SOTA is hardly
“mainstream”, that’s what makes it special. Surely we can
agree on that?
I’ve never said anything to the contrary, Richard.
Mike 2E0YYY
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Both you and Tom, decided to poo poo…
Not so Mike. If you re-read my post I made two constructive suggestions. One was that on request, and on payment of the extra engraving (that is charged per letter) that it may be possible to have trophies endorsed for what you seek. The other was that a well run S2S award scheme already exists. I have some of these certificates, and very nice they are too.
I don’t call that "poo poo"ing. I call that being positive, friendly and helpful.
It is very easy for someone who reaches the 1000 points for either activator or chaser using only CW, to request that their award states “all CW” - as a glance at the activator log will confirm this. Similarly, as you have added “S2S” in the notes column for all your chaser logs, you should be able to apply for your Shack Sloth trophy, and request to have “All S2S” added.
If you go through the trophy ordering process on the website, you will see that options like “All VHF”, “QRP” and “10k unique” are available, so I am sure “All S2S” would be available on request. The surcharge for these additions is £1 per letter (it is what the engraver charges us), so “All S2S” is available for you for £6 extra.
So if you want it recognised, go ahead. We already have the facility to do so within our existing structure and awards. Nothing new is required. And as I said, if you prefer, a set of awards based exclusively on S2S QSOs are available on the Summitsbase website, and are highly recommended.
Tom M1EYP
In reply to 2E0YYY:
I have now reached the ultimate in awards. Not Mountain Goat, not S2S-25 uniques, not S2S-50 uniques, not SOTA 100 uniques activated. No I have by far the best award “worked all LKB”. I worked the set G6LKB, M0LKB & M6LKB and I worked them consequetively from the same summit and now the official “worked all LKB” card is pinned to the shack wall. It has pride of place as it is the only award on show. I haven’t applied for my MG trophy yet and my recently obtained 12wpm Morse certificate is still in my bag from the weekend. That’s how good a “worked all LKB” award is 
As there is no facility in the Database to tick a box for a S2S contact
That’s because we don’t do S2S awards. No award, no need for facilities to handle it. Mike G4BLH does some excellent S2S awards. I have 2 (S2S-25 No. 005 and S2S-50 No. 005) and the the pictures on them are lovely. Mike does these awards FOC and it must take a lot of his time checking them (and he does check them properly as he found some logging errors in one of my claims). It would be a somewhat rum do for Mike to have come up with his S2S awards and be running and then for the SOTA MT to come along an do the same and steal Mike’s thunder. We don’t work like that. It’s the same reason that I don’t provide a general summit location to Google map feature on the database: Mario DC7CCC already does that so there is no need to do the same. Only if Mario or Mike stopped providing their services would we consider doing something similar.
So you can apply for a Shack Sloth award and have endorsed “all s2s” maybe even “all s2s vhf”. You can also apply for an S2S award from Mike. You’ll almost certainly qualify for the 100 unqiues and possibly the 250 unique level.
it’s unlikely the true numbers will ever be known.
You have 653 contacts logged with stations who were signing “/p”. Not all will be S2S contacts. I’ve ignored and “/m” QSOs as I doubt anyone on a summit would sign that way. Not all those “/p” will be S2S, however you haven’t logged S2S contacts in a consistent way so it would require a significantly more complex query with some kind of REGEX to get all your S2S contacts. A guestimate would put it at around 500-525 S2S contacts.
Andy
MM0FMF
Andy,
Top Tip: Look at Mickey’s chaser log, rather than his activator log.
Tom M1EYP
In reply to M1EYP:
Ah! Classic can’t see the wood for the trees. When you can see so much of the database as I can then it is sometimes overwhelming. I must look at it more selectively from time to time to see what I can’t see
Andy
MM0FMF
In reply to M1EYP:
Andy,
Top Tip: Look at Mickey’s chaser log, rather than his activator log.
Were you supplying free 12 year old malt on the SOTA stand yesterday, too 
Mike
2E0YYY
In reply to 2E0YYY:
Just to prove that it can be done I have included “All S2S” to the options to be engraved on a trophy (extra £6 to include this) and “All S2S” and “All Summit to Summit” as options to be included on certificates (no additional charge).
Any other suggestions (polite and physically possible) will be considered if you contact me directly.
Barry GM4TOE
SOTA Awards Manager
PS: We have much older malts available here in the village, why go for youthful 12 year old “cooking” malts when you can have the real stuff!!!
In reply to 2E0YYY:
If he was, I will override the XYLs objection and be there at opening time next year! 
I hope Barry’s suggestion is satisfactory to you, Mike, because otherwise what you were demanding was a new category of award involving a rewrite of the website, revamping of the database and expenditure on a new set of trophy blanks at a time when the MT are fully extended - and I do mean “fully” - in bringing new Associations on line and handling updates. Despite my concerns that such an award would tempt activators into spending excessive times on high summits in the hope of amassing S2S contacts, this really is the major consideration, diversion of effort at a time when we have never been busier. I find the idea of this new category of award attractive myself, but I doubt we could do it at this time.
Andy, I have logged some activators signing /M - they were walking across the AZ with handies at the time!
73
Brian G8ADD
In reply to MM0FMF:
“I have now reached the ultimate in awards. Not Mountain Goat, not S2S-25 uniques, not S2S-50 uniques, not SOTA 100 uniques activated. No I have by far the best award “worked all LKB”. I worked the set G6LKB, M0LKB & M6LKB”
Although not an LKB, M3ULV must be worked for the offficial all LKB award.
In reply to G1INK:
That must be for an endorsed version! I have to smile at the fact that Dave actually has cards for this, it really amuses me.
Maybe there will be special version for working the set when they have their Jubilee or Olympic callsigns on the air?
Andy
MM0FMF
After just over a year, I’ve finally taken time out to enter my summit
to summit contacts into the Database (a couple nights of misery I
might add) and was surprised to find I’d crossed the magic 1000 point
hurdle.
Hi Mike!
Well done that man. And always great to work you S2S for a chat - hi!
As a follow-up I thought I’d have a wee ‘shifty’ as to my own S2S tally and like yourself was suprised that my present total is 1740 points (achieving 1000 in March last year - both need to be confirmed).
Fortunately it was not the onerous task that you had as it’s fairly easy to tally my score as an extract out of my 500 S2S’s claim which is in with Mike BLH at the moment for checking. Fingers crossed.
Keep up the good work Mike and here’s to our next S2S.
73
Jack (:>J
In reply to GM4COX:
Hi Mike!
Well done that man. And always great to work you S2S for a chat - hi!
Hi Jack!
Look forward to seeing you at Livingstone in June. I’ve twisted the arm of Ray at Prowhip Antennas and he’s coming along too. Unfortunately, he has a bad habit of leading me astray
As a follow-up I thought I’d have a wee ‘shifty’ as to my own S2S
tally and like yourself was suprised that my present total is 1740
points (achieving 1000 in March last year - both need to be
confirmed).
That is some achivement Jack!
Fortunately it was not the onerous task that you had as it’s fairly
easy to tally my score as an extract out of my 500 S2S’s claim which
is in with Mike BLH at the moment for checking. Fingers crossed.
I’ve learned my lesson and will be logging then as I go in future.
Keep up the good work Mike and here’s to our next S2S.
Cheers Jack…
73 Mike
2E0YYY