so ive been running SO1R for probably 4 or 5 years now doing mostly CW contests, CQWW, SS, some sprints. my rates are decent, usually can hold a run freq pretty well and i know when to S&P vs run. been thinking seriously about setting up SO2R this year but im not sure the juice is worth the squeeze for where im at skill-wise.

my main hang up is the timing piece. like i get the concept — while youre waiting for a response on radio 1 you're working a mult or a new Q on radio 2. but in practice it seems like the windows are so small and if you're not really quick with the interlocks and footswitch and all that, you just end up making a mess on both bands simultaneously and blowing contacts on both radios. ive watched some of the top ops do it on skimmer overlays and it looks almost unconscious for them, like they don't even think about it.

is there a threshold of like single radio contest operating hours or score level where SO2R starts making sense to try, or did most of you just dive in and suffer through a few contests to get the hang of it? also wondering if the antenna isolation piece is as painful to sort out as people say. running an ic-7300 now but id probably grab a used K3 or something as the second radio. anyway curious what the learning curve actually looked like for people who made the jump.

honest answer — it took me two full contest seasons before SO2R felt natural and not like im actively fighting the setup the whole time. and the first season i probably would have scored higher just going back to SO1R, no joke. the timing thing you're describing is real and its not something you can logic your way through, its genuinely a muscle memory thing. you have to rep it.

the antenna isolation question is the one i'd focus on first actually because if you dont have that sorted out youre going to be chasing your tail with RFI the entire time and it'll make the learning curve feel way worse than it actually is. what antennas are you working with? that matters a lot. dipoles close together on adjacent bands are a different problem than yagis with 30db of F/B on separate towers. i spent probably 3 weekends just with a signal generator and my SDR tracing interference paths before i even tried to operate SO2R in a real contest. worth every minute of it.

as for radios, the K3 is a solid choice for second radio, its SO2R pedigree is well established. just make sure whatever combo you end up with supports proper band data output so your logging software can handle the interlocks automatically. doing that manually is a nightmare and not really viable at any kind of useful rate.

i jumped in pretty early honestly maybe too early and yeah it was rough for a contest or two but i dont regret it. thing nobody told me was that your rate on radio 1 will actually drop for a while because part of your brain is always thinking about radio 2 now. you kind of have to accept that temporary regression as the cost of learning it.

one thing that helped me a ton was running some of the shorter contests like the sprints or state QSO parties first instead of jumping straight into CQWW 48 hours. lower stakes, still teaches you the timing, and you dont feel as bad when you fumble a contact because you were distracted switching radios.