so ive been doing single op for a few years now, mostly phone contests but starting to get more into CW, and i keep reading about SO2R and how it can dramatically improve your rate but honestly every time i try to understand the setup it makes my head spin a little. like i get the basic concept, two radios, run on one while S&P on the other, but the actual implementation seems like a rabbit hole.

right now i have an IC-7300 as my main rig and i picked up a used TS-590SG a few months ago thinking id eventually try this. the antenna situation is what im most worried about honestly — i have a yagi up for 20/15/10 and a trapped vertical for 40/80 and i dont really have a second set of antennas. does anyone actually run SO2R with just one antenna per band, like sharing? or do you need completely separate antenna systems to avoid blowing up your front ends

also wondering how people handle the audio when youre running SO2R, do you just do one radio per ear or is there some smarter way to manage that. i tried headphone switching manually during a sprint once and it was a disaster

the antenna question is the real one, yeah. you technically can run SO2R on the same band with proper filtering but its a nightmare and most people dont bother unless theyre serious about it. the easier approach especially starting out is to just run on one band and S&P on a different band — like you said you have 20/15/10 covered with the yagi and 40/80 on the vertical, that actually works pretty well for SO2R because theyre completely separate antenna systems already. the key thing is you need some kind of station switching setup so you arent manually swapping coax connectors mid-contest, that'll kill your rate faster than anything.

for audio, most people go left ear radio 1 right ear radio 2. sounds simple but you have to train your brain to filter it out and focus on what matters. took me probably 3 or 4 serious contest weekends before it stopped feeling like torture. theres also stuff like the microHAM station master or SO2R boxes that handle a lot of the switching logic automatically and integrate with logging software like N1MM. if you can swing one of those it makes the whole thing way less painful. dont try to go full manual SO2R for your first attempt, you'll just frustrate yourself and miss contacts

honestly the antenna thing is less of a problem than people think if you're running on separate bands. the isolation between 20m and 40m is usually enough that your front ends wont care, i've run my K3 and an old FT-950 simultaneously with a yagi on high bands and my 40m dipole and never had a problem. where it gets ugly is if you try to run two radios on the same band at the same time, then you need bandpass filters, good ones, and even then it can get hairy depending on how close the antennas are.

rate-wise i'll say this — SO2R doesnt automatically make you faster. ive seen guys who are incredible SO1R ops that smoke mediocre SO2R stations because they just work the bands more efficiently. the multiplier hunting while running is where SO2R really shines in my experience, like if youre running 20 and a new mult pops up on 15 you can snag it without breaking your run frequency. that part is genuinely useful. but if your CW speed or exchange efficiency isnt already pretty solid, adding the complexity of a second radio might just slow you down overall