What is the history of naming 1000 activator points "Mountain Goat"?

For what its worth a '“complete” award would be something I’d like to see up there with MG.

There is a certificate: Product Detail | SOTA Awards
but a glass trophy is a possibility

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Personally, I’m more than content to leave the MG and SS awards as they are, and NOT add higher grander trophies above that for supposedly better achievements. The MG and SS should remain as the “gold standards” and not be diminished by the addition of new “vanity” awards.

There are certificates available for higher thresholds, and names associated to some of them, as evolved in discussion on this reflector - but that is sufficient.

Like others have said, once you’ve reached MG/SS, you can look to progress in other areas - like Completes, S2S, Uniques, region completion, association completion etc.

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I agree

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Thank you John, that answers my question. And it shows again that creativity usually comes after the intake of a certain amount of spirits :wink: Good to see you are still around here after 20+ years. Nice to meet you and thank you for SOTA.

And to comment on the awards discussion - which was not at all my reason for starting this thread :face_with_diagonal_mouth: - …people who are so vain that they care about titles and certificates should look less in the mirror and to the wall, but more out of the window. You’re MG or SS and we respect you for the effort it took. To show you put in extra effort a simple mention of how many times you achieved it is enough (MGx2, SSx50). It shows to me that you care enough about 1) being active, 2) nature, 3) amateur radio and 4) helping other MGs or would be MGs to obtain more S2S points.

'Nuf said. 73

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I don’t entirely agree. MG is as hard as it has ever been, but SS has become a lot easier as the number of Associations and the resulting activity has grown. In my view MG has retained its value as a well earned award, but SS has become too easy. Can SS be considered a trophy-worthy achievement on a par with MG when it can be achieved so quickly? So far in just this year the DB shows that 5 chasers have got over 10,000 points and 269 have achieved SS level scores - in just four months! I’m not saying that SS comes in a packet of cornflakes, but it is vastly easier than it was in the early years of SOTA. It is no longer a great achievement.

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You forget that we need chasers. If they have fun in collecting 5.000.000 chaser points even though SS is achieved with only 1000, then I’m happy for them, because when I do an activation I can be sure I will have enough QSOs in the log to make my activation valid.

And at the same time they become friends: in the few activations I have done till now I already found that when I hear ZL1TM or JH1MXV there is a smile on my face. They are always there to wish me good luck at the end of our QSO and make my ascent to the top worthwhile.

On the other end of the spectrum: with the current levels of noise at my home QTH I will probably only achieve SS in 5~10 years. You cannot deny it will be a great achievement then.

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No, but it never has been. In fact the two are distinct awards with their own merits and shouldn’t be compared.

You’re an old hand Brian, a multiple SS who can rack up points quickly even with one hand tied behind your back (in other words refusing to enjoy the fruits of CW or FT8). But don’t let that allow you to diminish the achievement of someone getting into SOTA, aspiring towards, and achieving SS.

Edit: Fantastic points by @BX2ABT above, with which I entirely agree.

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I don’t agree with this as a blanket statement.

How difficult SS is depends on your circumstances. For example, I am out of range of all 2m activations (living miles away and in an RF hole). On HF my only permanent antennas are indoors, running QRP (and 20m can’t be used due to VDSL interference. In no way does collecting points using this sort of setup equate to someone with a 60ft tower and 1kw.

Actually the more I think about this, the more I am angry that a member of the MT rubbishes participants efforts like this. I thought SOTA was about encouraging participation?

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Four points was chosen, at the beginning, after debate whether it should be three. I don’t know if a pint in a pub was involved. Further, when I discovered Sota during the last week of 2011, it was common that there were no alerts posted Monday thru Thursday in the West of the US, and almost no one went up a hill without alerting back then.

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Don’t forget that I regard myself as primarily a chaser. My discovery of SOTA and my first chase was in February 2004, it took me until December 2005 to make it to SS. Two chasers made it to SS in the first year of SOTA. The first MG was awarded in the third year. Right from the start it was easier getting SS than MG, but the degree of difference has increased vastly since then. Of course we are not on a level playing field, Jonathon, someone working can do little chasing in the weekdays, a retiree can chase seven days a week, someone suffering urban QRM (as I do) is at a disadvantage, someone with a 40m beam on a 100 foot mast is at an advantage. Its always been so, but within the limitations of one’s home station there is a huge difference in the opportunities in 2003 when there were just a handful of Associations, and today when there is around a hundred. For that reason SS is easier today despite the handicaps of urban radio smog. This is not a rubbishing of the SS, it is a dispassionate evaluation of relative difficulty.

…by a chaser with who has chased over 6000 activations, has over 22K points and has been SOTA chasing for over 19 years.

The chasers awards need to be more achievable and rewarding than the activator awards in order to maintain activity levels for the activators. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are plenty of higher level chasing targets and wallpaper available beyond SS, especially with the Uniques, S2S, Completes, and personal challenges to chase all summits in a region or association. There is absolutely no need to change the goalposts or add new trophy award levels to the chaser points section.

If nothing else, we can see it would be highly contentious - and we certainly don’t need that!

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Note that I have not advocated doing away with SS, or making it more difficult. It has always been open ended past the 1,000 points, I merely advocate that we recognise a stage or two beyond SS as further named or otherwise recognised levels of achievement. If you can achieve 100,000 points, as 27 chasers have to date, doesn’t it deserve some recognition?

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Yes. A certificate. And maybe a special name. But not a trophy that would overshadow the SS.

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I’m firmly in the “It’s not broke; don’t fix it” camp. :slight_smile:

Chris
KG7VLX

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Good judgment on choosing an integer number (4).
With this crowd, it might have been something like Pi or e.

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Here, here! Depending on what part of the map you live, achieving 1000 SOTA points is quite hard. Raising the bar will make it that much less attainable and some activators may lose interest. It is achievable but takes a concerted effort.

1,000 points for MG is perfect. I say don’t change anything.

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Matt, there has been no suggestion of changing either MG or SS. I have only suggested adding a higher level to SS to reflect the fact that some chasers are able to achieve large multiples of the basic 1,000 points in just a year.

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Hi,
As Barry GM4TIE has said, certificates are available on request for achievements beyond MG and SS. So there is some recognition.

However, without taking the shine off MG or SS, could there be some formal names for a couple of the distinctive higher levels?

I know my limitations and haven’t chased after the available certificates since my early days so I personally won’t have another certificate or handsome trophy on my mantle piece. But the grand achievements should be recognised with an additional title. IMO.

After all in the UK there are higher awards that can follow on from a knighthood.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

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It is instructive to look at the Chaser Roll of Honour in the database. The leading chaser has 321,938 points. There are five chasers with over 200,000 points, 27 with over 100,000 points, and 513 of the informally named “Supersloths” with over 10,000 points. In addition, I see that the leading chaser in 2021 achieved 80,995 points in just that year, while 59 chasers exceeded 10,000 points. So, Ron, you and I think alike! One name that I have thought of, and which is hypothetically achievable now, is the Megasloth with a million points! Will it happen? Perhaps. It would certainly be a feat worth celebrating!

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