so ive been doing contests for a few years now, mostly CQWW and SS, running single op on 100w with a tribander and a wire for 40/80. consistently getting somewhere in the 500-800 QSO range for a full weekend effort which i know isnt spectacular but im happy with it. been reading a lot about SO2R lately and wondering if its actually worth setting up for someone at my level or if im better off just focusing on rate optimization on a single radio first.

my main bottleneck honestly seems to be the times when i finish a run frequency and the band goes dead on me — i end up spending like 10-15 minutes just SandP-ing around trying to find a new run spot or a new mult. i figure thats where a second radio would help but the filtering and interference issues between two rigs running simultaneously seems like a whole rabbit hole i dont want to fall into without knowing if its actually going to move the needle.

anyone gone through this decision point? did SO2R actually improve your scores meaningfully or did you spend more time managing the setup than operating

honestly the SO2R rabbit hole is real and it will eat your weekends before you ever use it in a contest. i went through this about 4 years ago and what i found was that my single radio discipline was the bigger problem — i was losing way more time to inefficient band changes and not having a second radio wasnt really the issue.

what actually helped me more was just getting serious about run strategy. if youre losing a run freq, the trick is to have your second VFO already parked on a fallback spot before you need it — you should basically never be searching blind when a freq dies. and on the mult side, keeping a separate window with a cluster filtered to new mults only so you can pounce fast without breaking rhythm.

that said once my operating was tighter i did eventually build out SO2R with a pair of K3s and an antenna switch matrix and yeah it does add QSOs, probably 15-20% for me in CQWW. but the bandpass filter situation is non-trivial, especially if your antennas are close together. i run Dunestar 600 filters and still had to do a lot of placement work to get the intermod down to acceptable levels. if your antennas are on the same tower youre going to feel that pain hard.

the filter thing is what got me too. i thought i could just throw a couple of BPFs inline and call it done but on 40 and 15 when theyre both open simultaneously the second receiver was still getting hammered even with the filters. ended up having to stagger the antenna directions a bit which helped some.

for what its worth though even a basic SO2R setup where you're just using the second radio passively to monitor a second band for mults — not transmitting on both simultaneously — is pretty low risk and still adds value. you dont have to go full interlocked SO2R right away. just having ears on 40 while youre running 20 so you can hear when a new mult shows up is useful and doesnt require any of the crazy filtering. thats how i started and it was basically zero extra setup beyond a second radio and headphones.