so ive been doing single op contests for a few years now and my rates are decent, usually pulling 150-180/hr on a good run during something like CQ WW but i keep hitting a wall somewhere around hour 4 or 5 where the run dries up and i just sit there calling CQ into nothing waiting for the band to come back or whatever. a buddy of mine who does pretty well in the SOAB HP category keeps telling me SO2R is what fixes that problem and youre basically throwing away time if youre not at least S&Ping on a second radio while your run frequency sits idle.

thing is ive got a spare TS-590 just collecting dust and my station could probably support a second antenna without too much heroics, but every time i start looking into the interstation interference side of it i get kind of overwhelmed. like filtering, bandpass filters, the whole 2BSIQ thing if you really want to do it right. feels like a rabbit hole that never ends.

anyone here actually run SO2R from a modest suburban station, like not a contest superstation or anything, and find it genuinely improved their scores? or is this one of those things that sounds great in theory but the setup headaches eat up whatever time advantage you gain

yeah the interference problem is real but it's honestly more manageable than the forums make it look. i ran SO2R for the first time seriously during ARRL DX CW last year with a pair of Elecraft K3s and some cheap bandpass filters from 4O3A and it wasnt perfect but it was workable. the key thing nobody tells you up front is that you dont have to go full 2BSIQ right out of the gate, that stuff takes actual practice with the SO2R More software or whatever you're using. just start by using the second radio passively, like when your run goes dead you flip over and S&P for a few minutes, bag a few mults you'd have missed, then come back. even doing it that way my score went up noticeably. the rate math works out pretty fast once you stop losing 20-30 minutes per band change just staring at a waterfall wondering where everyone went.

the filter situation depends a lot on your antenna setup too. if your two antennas have decent physical separation and youre not trying to run 40 and 80 at the same time with dipoles 30 feet apart you might be surprised how okay it is with just the bandpass filters. worth trying before you convince yourself it cant work.

rate optimization in general honestly comes down to knowing when to abandon a run before most people would. i see a lot of guys holding onto a dead frequency way too long hoping it comes back and meanwhile there's a whole fresh band opening they're missing. SO2R helps with that but even on one radio just being more aggressive about band changes during the slow hours made a bigger difference for me than any equipment upgrade. that said yeah if you have a spare radio sitting there it's kind of hard to justify not at least trying it, worst case you learn something about your station's RF environment which is useful to know anyway.