so i've been doing contests for probably 12 years now and SO2R always seemed like this mythical thing that the big guns did and i never really got it to work right. always had either the audio bleed issue or i'd lose my run frequency because i wasn't paying attention while S&Ping on the second radio. finally had a decent CQWW SSB last weekend and i think i've got the basics down enough to actually talk about it.

the thing that made the biggest difference honestly wasn't the radios or the software, it was just forcing myself to actually listen to both ears independently. sounds obvious but i kept defaulting to mixing both receivers into a mono blend and that just defeats the whole purpose. once i committed to keeping the run radio in my left ear only and the S&P radio in the right it started feeling more natural after like the first hour.

rate-wise i was seeing around 180-190/hr during the good runs on 15m saturday morning which for me is pretty solid. probably left points on the table because i still hesitate too long before calling CQ again after a QSO but thats a timing thing i gotta work on. anyone else gone through this and have tips for reducing that dead air time between QSOs? my logging software is N1MM and i've got the F-key timing set pretty aggressively already but still feel like im slow on the exchange sometimes.

yeah the stereo headphone thing is the key and most people resist it way too long. i ran mono for probably my first three years of SO2R and wondered why my brain felt fried after 6 hours. once you separate the audio it's like your brain just... handles it differently somehow. less cognitive load even though technically you're processing more information, weird how that works.

for the dead air between QSOs -- are you using the automatic CQ repeat in N1MM? you can set it so after you log the contact it just fires the CQ macro automatically after a configurable delay. i run mine at something like 1.2 seconds which feels a little aggressive at first but calms down once you're in a rhythm. the other thing is just rep honestly, i noticed my between-QSO gap shrunk a lot just from doing more sprints where you dont have time to be slow.

180-190 on 15m ssb is respectable, dont be too hard on yourself. i've seen people claim higher but conditions and where you're located matter so much. what antennas are you running? that changes the whole picture on rate more than most people want to admit. ive been doing single radio contesting for years and keep going back and forth on whether SO2R is worth the station complexity for someone not in a great RF location like me (suburban lot, neighbors, the whole deal). curious what your second radio setup looks like band-filter wise.