so ive been doing SO2R for a few years now and i feel like im still not getting the rate i should be during the busy hours. like the concept makes sense, you work a station on radio 1, while youre waiting for the exchange you're hunting on radio 2, fine. but in practice when the pileup is deep on radio 1 and youre running 150+ an hour it feels like switching at all just kills momentum.

my setup is two K3s, one into a stack of 4el yagis at 60ft, the other into a dipole so the antennas are at least somewhat isolated. audio is mixed with the DVK handling the CQ cycles. the issue is more operational than hardware at this point i think.

do you guys actually run SO2R hard during a good run or do you basically just babysit radio 1 until the rate drops? ive heard some guys say they only seriously use radio 2 when they drop below like 80/hr on radio 1 but that seems like leaving a lot on the table during slower periods

yeah this is basically the eternal SO2R question and honestly there isnt one right answer. what i do — and i picked this up from watching some of the big gun scores talk about it — is i set a kind of mental rate threshold. if radio 1 is screaming i'll throw maybe one or two multiplier hunts per 10 minutes on radio 2, only when im actually waiting for a repeat or when somebody took forever to send their call. if youre in a genuine 150/hr run you probably shouldnt be doing full search and pounce on r2 anyway, the mental overhead will cost you more than you gain.

where SO2R really earns its keep for me is in the medium-rate periods, say 60-100/hr, thats when you can comfortably park on radio 2 and grab mults. also useful during band transitions, youre calling CQ on r1 dying band while you establish a new run on r2 before you fully commit to switching. that alone is probably worth 50-100 Qs over a 48hr contest for me

honestly from what i understand — and i only tried SO2R once during last years sweepstakes so take this with a grain of salt — the timing thing is probably something that just clicks after enough reps. like i kept second-guessing myself the whole time and ended up fumbling both radios at once at one point which was embarrassing. i did notice that having a footswitch to commit audio to one radio or the other helped a lot, before that i was fumbling with the keyboard way too much during exchanges