so ive been doing contests for a few years now, mostly single op on 20 and 40, and my rates are decent but i keep hitting a wall around 150-160 qso/hr during the good runs and then it just falls off when the band gets crowded or i need to find mults. been reading a lot about SO2R and watching some of the webinars from the big guns and i get the theory — keep radio 1 running on a run frequency and use radio 2 to hunt mults or grab a second frequency on another band for when the rate dies. but honestly setting it up looks like a pain. the audio switching alone seems like it would drive me nuts, and i havent even thought about the bandpass filter situation yet.

my current setup is a K3 and an IC-7300 sitting there mostly unused, so i technically have the hardware already. i use N1MM+ for logging. has anyone here actually made the jump to SO2R from a similar starting point and was it worth it for the kind of contest where you're not trying to win the world, just improve your score and have more fun during the slow periods? or is this one of those things where it only really pays off if you're seriously competing for a plaque?

honest answer — it depends a lot on how much the setup headache bothers you versus how much the dead time during contests bothers you. for me the dead time was killing me, sitting there spinning the vfo on a quiet band while radio 2 is just collecting dust is painful once you know there's a better way.

the bandpass filter thing is real though, you absolutely need them if both radios are going at once or you'll have one receiving in the mud while the other transmits. i run a set of Array Solutions filters and they work fine but its another $300-400 you're looking at minimum if you go that route. the audio side is actually easier than i expected, N1MM has pretty good SO2R support and once you get the focus switching mapped out it becomes muscle memory. took me maybe two or three full contests before i stopped feeling like i was rubbing my stomach and patting my head at the same time.

with a K3 and a 7300 you've already got the hard part figured out honestly. the K3 especially plays well in SO2R setups. i'd say try it in a lower stakes contest first, maybe a state QSO party or one of the shorter sprint formats where the pressure is lower and you can fumble around without it costing you much.

the bandpass filters are non negotiable if your antennas are anywhere close together, learned that the hard way during a CQ WW a few years back. thought i could get away with good antenna separation alone and spent the first hour wondering why my second radio sounded like garbage every time i transmitted on the first one. wasted probably 45 minutes troubleshooting before i just gave up on SO2R for that contest.

150-160/hr is actually solid for someone not running a big station, if you want to push that number up during a run the thing that helped me more than SO2R at first was just working on my exchange cadence and learning when to not chase every mult immediately. sometimes staying on a good run frequency and letting the rate ride is better than jumping to radio 2 for a mult thats only worth one point. the SO2R stuff really shines during the off-peak hours when the big runs dry up and you need something to do between the sporadic callers.