so ive been thinking about this for a while now. been doing contests for maybe 4 years, mostly single op on 40 and 20, usually finish somewhere in the middle of the pack for my section. my rate is decent but i feel like i hit a ceiling — like i know where to find the mults, i know when to S&P vs run, all that stuff. but i keep reading about SO2R and how the top guys use it to fill dead time while they're running on a primary radio and i honestly cant figure out if its worth getting into or if its just going to make everything worse.

my current setup is a 756 pro iii into a hex beam at about 35 feet, nothing fancy. would need a second radio and some kind of switching setup minimum. ive seen some guys run SO2R with just a bandpass filter setup and careful band selection so you're not totally hosing yourself with intermod, but i feel like the hardware investment alone is significant before you even get to the operating skill side of it.

the mental load thing is what worries me more than the gear honestly. like splitting attention between two radios during a run sounds brutal. is there a good way to ease into it or do you just kind of throw yourself in the deep end during a slower contest

honest answer — it took me almost a full contest season before SO2R felt natural rather than like i was actively making my score worse. the first few times i tried it i was so focused on managing the second radio that my run rate actually dropped, which kind of defeats the whole point. what helped me was only using the second radio for S&P during the slower periods, not trying to do anything fancy, just tune around on 15 while i was running 40 during a lull. baby steps.

the hardware side is real though. bandpass filters are not optional if your two bands are anywhere close to each other. i run a pair of 4O3A monoband filters and even then i had to be careful about antenna placement. if you're on a hex beam you're probably okay since it's directional and you can at least point the two signals somewhat away from each other, but dont expect it to be plug and play. the station integration piece takes time to sort out. W5XD has some good writeups on the logging side if you're using writelog or N1MM, the SO2R support in N1MM is pretty solid now actually.

i tried SO2R once during sweepstakes and it was a disaster lol. had the second rig bleeding into the first one something awful, took like 45 minutes to figure out it was a grounding issue not the filters. by then i was so flustered my rate had tanked and i just went back to single radio and had a fine time anyway.

not saying dont do it, just that maybe pick a smaller contest to experiment with first rather than sweepstakes where every qso kind of matters for the multiplier chase. something like a state qso party where the pressure is lower would let you mess around with the setup without feeling like you're throwing away a real effort. thats what i'd do if i were starting over with it