so i finally pulled the trigger and built out a proper SO2R setup for this years SS and honestly im still not sure if the juice was worth the squeeze. been contesting for about 12 years now mostly single radio and always felt like i was leaving points on the table watching the mult station guys rack up numbers while i was running a frequency.

the setup itself was the usual nightmare — two radios, the microHAM station master deluxe handling the interlocking, had to rework my antenna switching because my 40m yagi was sharing a feed line with a dipole and the isolation just wasnt there. spent probably 6 weekends sorting out RFI issues before i was confident enough to actually use it in a contest. the second radio kept getting into the audio chain on the first one whenever i was running on 20 and hunting on 40 at the same time.

actual contest operating though, once i got past the brain overload of managing two radios simultaneously, the rate went up noticeably. like genuinely surprised at the difference. im running N1MM and the SO2R features there are pretty solid once you get the band map talking to both radios properly. my question really is about strategy — when youre running on one radio, how aggressive should you be about S&P on the second one? i kept second-guessing myself, dropping a run frequency to chase a mult on radio 2 and then losing the run frequency entirely. felt like i was constantly making bad tradeoffs

yeah the frequency protection thing is the hardest habit to build honestly. the general rule most serious SO2R guys use is you never abandon a hot run for anything less than a new mult, and even then you have to be fast about it. if your rate on radio 1 is above like 80-90 per hour you're better off just letting that mult go and picking it up later in the contest when things slow down.

the thing that helped me most was setting up a separate mult list view in N1MM that shows me what i still need per band, so when im doing S&P on radio 2 im not just randomly tuning around, im specifically targeting the bands where i have the most unworked mults. changes the whole mindset from reactive to actually having a plan. also worth noting that in sweepstakes specifically the mult structure rewards you for working everything at least once so the calculus is a bit different than say CQ WW where mults stack per band

the RFI stuff you mentioned — did you end up using bandpass filters on both radios? that was the thing that finally made my setup liveable, 4O3A filters on both radios with proper sequencing through the microHAM. before that it was just chaos

i tried SO2R once and went back to single radio after about 3 hours lol. maybe im just not wired for it. felt like i was doing both things badly instead of one thing well. the guys who are good at it seem to have like a completely different operating style, almost like they've automated certain decisions so they dont have to consciously think about them during the run. maybe someday ill try again but for now i just focus on running clean and keeping my exchange crisp. still managed top 10 in my section last SS so it cant be that bad a strategy