so ive been running single op for years now, usually do okay in the sprints and state QSO parties but i keep getting crushed by the SO2R guys and i finally decided to look into it seriously this past winter. spent about two months reading everything i could find and honestly im more confused than when i started.

my current setup is a K3 as the main radio and i have an older FT-950 collecting dust in the corner that i could theoretically use as the second radio. the interstation interference is what scares me most — my antennas are an 80m dipole and a 40m dipole up about 40 feet, which arent exactly optimally decoupled. i know guys running stacked yagis with 60dB of isolation between bands but thats not my situation at all.

the bigger question im wrestling with is whether the rate improvement actually justifies all the complexity. like even if i get the hardware working, now im managing two VFOs, two loggers, trying to run a frequency on radio 1 while SandP-ing on radio 2, and my brain is already fried after 6 hours of single radio contesting. anyone gone through this transition and have honest thoughts on whether it was worth it or not

honest answer? for most HF contests it absolutely is worth it once you get past the initial setup pain but that caveat matters a lot. the interference issue with your specific antenna arrangement is going to be a real problem if youre trying to run on 40 while searching on 80 simultaneously. i ran a similar situation for about a season before i gave up and put a decent bandpass filter setup in line — the 4O3A filters made a massive difference but thats another 600 bucks you probably werent planning to spend.

the workflow thing is honestly the bigger hurdle than the hardware. i'd suggest not even thinking about running on both radios at first. just use radio 2 strictly for finding mults while youre running on radio 1. its not true SO2R in the full sense but your rate will still go up noticeably and your head wont explode. i picked up maybe 15% more QSOs per hour just doing that before i ever tried running two frequencies at once. the key is getting N1MM set up right so the bandmap on the second radio is feeding useful spots automatically and you're not manually hunting around.

the FT-950 as radio 2 might actually be fine depending on what bands youre running concurrently. the issue is youre gonna hear your K3 in it no matter what if theyre on adjacent bands and your antennas are that close together. i tried something similar with an old TS-590 before i upgraded and the bleedover on 15 when i was running 20 was bad enough to make it pretty much useless unless i was careful about power levels on the run radio.

one thing nobody really talks about enough is just the mental training side of it. like the hardware can be perfect and youll still be slower than single radio for the first several contests because your brain isnt wired for it yet. i kept a second radio in the shack for almost a full year just doing casual operating with it, switching my attention back and forth, before i ever tried it in a real contest. seemed wasteful at the time but when i finally used it in CQ WW my rate was way better than i expected for a first attempt.