so ive been doing contests for a few years now, mostly single op single radio, and i keep reading about SO2R and how the top scores are basically all using it. finally set up a second radio this past weekend for SS phone and honestly i dont know if i helped myself or hurt myself lol

the interference between the two radios was way worse than i expected even with the bandpass filters. running 100w on 40 and trying to S&P on 20 at the same time and it was just a mess. i know guys swear by the interlocking so the second radio cant transmit while the first is in QSO but getting that set up with my logging software was a whole afternoon of pain

anyway my rate actually went UP in the second half when i figured out what i was doing, went from like 60/hr to pushing 85-90 for a couple stretches on 40m during the evening. so maybe there's something to it. but i feel like i spent more mental energy managing the two radios than actually working stations. is that just a learning curve thing or is SO2R genuinely one of those things where you need a full season of practice before it clicks

yeah 100% learning curve, took me probably 3 or 4 serious contest weekends before i stopped feeling like i was patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time. the key for me was treating radio 2 as a totally passive thing at first — like it's just there to find my next frequency, i dont transmit on it unless radio 1 is between QSOs. you build up from there

the filtering situation is real though, you really cant cheap out on that. i went through two different sets of bandpass filters before i found a combination that actually isolated things enough to not lose my mind. also your antenna situation matters a ton, if your 40m and 20m antennas are only 30 feet apart you're gonna have a rough time no matter what filters you throw at it. once i got the antennas farther apart and dialed in the interlock timing in N1MM it started feeling more natural. now i cant imagine contesting without it for anything serious

honestly the rate gains from SO2R are real but i think people undersell how much setup time goes into making it actually work reliably. i watched a video of one of the top contesters walking through their station and it looked like more of an engineering project than a radio hobby lol. for a lot of guys doing regional or club contests the mental overhead might genuinely not be worth it vs just focusing on operating better on one radio — better CQ frequency selection, knowing when to S&P vs run, that kind of stuff. i got pretty competitive scores for a while before i went SO2R just by being smarter about band transitions and not sitting on a dead frequency too long