so ive been doing contests pretty seriously for about 3 years now, usually top 10 in my section for single op stuff, and every time i look at the high scores i see all the serious guys are running SO2R and i keep wondering if its actually doing that much for their rate or if there's other stuff going on too like better antennas and location and whatnot

my current setup is a k3 and an ic-7300 that i use for monitoring but its not really wired up for proper SO2R, no bandpass filters, no antenna switching automation, nothing like that. i've tried manually switching between the two during slow periods and honestly the interference between them even on different bands is pretty rough without filters. ran 40 and 15 simultaneously for about 20 minutes during sweepstakes last year and could hear the k3 bleeding into the 7300 rx even with them on opposite ends of the room

is it even worth getting into properly if im not going to spend the money on the full station2station filtering setup? or is there a budget way to do this that actually works. also curious how much rate improvement people actually see from SO2R vs just getting better at running and s&p switching on a single radio

honest answer — SO2R done halfway is probably worse than single radio done well. the bleed-through you're describing between the k3 and 7300 is going to drive you insane and kill your ability to actually copy calls, so you'd spend more mental energy managing the interference than you'd gain from the second radio opportunity. i ran SO2R for a couple years before i had proper filtering sorted and my scores were actually lower than when i was focused single op, just because the cognitive load was brutal

the real rate gains from SO2R come when you can seamlessly work a station on radio 1 while finding the next mult or a run frequency on radio 2 without even thinking about it. that takes clean audio on both receivers simultaneously. 4o3a or similar quality bandpass filters are expensive but they're kind of the price of admission. without them youre just doing manual band switching with extra steps and extra headaches

if budget is the constraint id honestly say keep working on your single radio operating efficiency first. stuff like faster exchange speed, better use of N1MM or whatever logger you use, dialing in your run vs s&p timing, working the grey line better — all of that probably adds more rate than a broken SO2R implementation. the top scores in your section are probably also just working way more hours and having better antennas like you said

yeah what he said about the filters is right but i'll add — the station automation side of SO2R is almost as important as the RF filtering. like even with clean audio if you're manually clicking to switch which radio is transmitting you're losing a ton of time and making mistakes under pressure. most serious SO2R ops are using winkeyer or similar with the logging software handling the PTT switching so the radio changeover is basically invisible to the operating flow

i built my SO2R setup over like two years, started with the filters, then added a stackmatch controller, then finally got the logging integration working right. first contest i did with everything actually working together was kind of a revelation honestly, you really do pick up QSOs you would have just missed otherwise, mostly during those dead spots on your run frequency where you'd normally just be calling CQ into nothing

for cqww specifically the mult hunting on radio 2 during a run is where SO2R really shines, new countries pop up on 10 or 12 and you can snag them without dropping your run on 20. but again, only if the whole system is working cleanly