so ive been doing serious contesting for about 4 years now mostly single op single radio and honestly been pretty competitive in my category but every time i look at the top scores in CQWW or SS the guys crushing it are almost all running SO2R and i keep wondering if im leaving a massive amount of points on the table

the thing is i understand the concept, run on one radio while the other is tuned to S&P on a second band, fill in the dead time between CQ responses — but actually implementing it seems like a nightmare. the station i have right now is a K3 and an IC-7300 so i technically have two radios but the interference between them even with decent band separation is brutal if i dont have proper filtering in place. tried it briefly during last years sweepstakes and the second radio was basically useless because it was getting hammered by the first one

i guess my question is, for someone who's mostly been doing high-rate running, what's the actual workflow when you add the second radio. do you just let the run radio sit there CQing and quickly tune around on radio 2 between responses, or is it more active than that. and is it even worth doing if my rate is already decent on the run radio. feels like it might just be a distraction

yeah the filtering thing is the real wall most people hit first. you need bandpass filters on both radios, ideally something like the 4O3A or ICE filters, not just a simple low pass. if you're running HF on both simultaneously the IMD from your own transmitter will basically deaf the receiver on radio 2 unless you have real band isolation. some guys also use separate antennas for each radio which helps enormously, like one beam and one vertical, just so you're not feeding RF back through a shared feedline

as for the workflow, when i'm doing it i basically treat the run radio as the primary and dont touch it except to hit F1 every 8-10 seconds or whatever your rhythm is. radio 2 is where your attention actually goes between those CQ cycles. you tune around, find a dupe-free mult or a new station, log it, and you're back before the next response hopefully. the hardest part honestly isnt the technical setup its the mental discipline to not blow your run because you got distracted chasing something on radio 2. takes a few contests before it clicks. you'll lose rate the first time or two but stick with it

honestly i tried SO2R once and it completely wrecked my focus for the whole contest, went back to single radio and my score actually went up lol. might just be a personal thing, some guys are wired for that kind of split attention and some arent. if your single radio rate is already solid you might get more mileage just tightening up your exchange timing and making sure your antenna is pointed right during the peak propagation windows than fighting with all the SO2R plumbing

that said if you do want to pursue it there's some good stuff in the N6TR and K3LR write-ups about station layout and keyer setup, N1MM+ has pretty decent SO2R support built in now too with the radio focus switching. just dont expect miracles the first time out