so ive been doing sweepstakes phone and cw for a few years now and usually finish somewhere in the middle of the pack for my category. running single op single radio, nothing crazy, just the k3 into a 3el yagi at about 45 feet. last year i finally broke 1000 QSOs in SS CW which felt pretty good but i keep seeing the top scores from guys running SO2R and the multiplier counts are just insane compared to mine.

ive got an old ic-746 sitting on the shelf doing nothing and ive been thinking about setting it up as a second radio. i know the basics of SO2R — run on one radio, S&P on the other, listen in your ear on the second while calling CQ on the first — but actually implementing it without causing a giant RF mess in my shack seems daunting. both antennas are pretty close together too, maybe 30 feet separation.

is it actually worth trying to learn this mid-contest or should i just focus on getting my run rate up first? i feel like my rate drops off hard after the first few hours because i run out of guys to work and then just wander around doing S&P inefficiently. maybe thats the real problem i should fix

honestly your instinct is right — fix the rate problem first before going SO2R. SO2R adds a ton of complexity and if your fundamentals arent solid it just becomes a distraction. the guys making it look easy have usually been doing it for years and have their station dialed in, like hardwired band switching, proper filtering between the radios, maybe a 2x4CD or an ICE bandpass filter setup. without that kind of isolation you're gonna get IMD garbage all over the place especially if the antennas are only 30 feet apart.

for the rate dropoff thing, are you keeping a second window open tracking where the multipliers are? a lot of people just run blind and then scramble for mults in the last hour. if you use N1MM or whatever, keep the bandmap populated and have a plan — like stay on 40 when propagation shifts, don't abandon a frequency too early just because it feels slow. and CQing with higher power intervals vs S&P has a huge effect on your overall efficiency. some contesters swear by the 80/20 rule, 80% running 20% S&P, but it depends on your rate at any given moment.

yeah the antenna separation thing is gonna bite you if you just plug both radios in and go for it. i tried something similar during a state QSO party a couple years back and my second radio basically turned into an expensive noise generator. ended up just using it to monitor the other band passively with the volume way down, which actually helped a little for knowing when to switch.

if you do want to try real SO2R eventually, look into the microHAM stuff or even just a manual bandpass filter set, the Array Solutions ones are decent. but seriously dont try to learn it during SS, that contest moves too fast and you'll just frustrate yourself. NAQP is a lot lower pressure and shorter, might be a better place to experiment