so ive been doing contests for maybe 4 years now, mostly single op on 20 and 40, usually end up somewhere in the middle of the pack for my category and im fine with that. but lately ive been reading more about SO2R and i guess im trying to figure out if its something worth pursuing or if the complexity just eats into the time you'd otherwise spend actually making contacts.

my current setup is an ic-7300 and a pretty decent dipole situation, nothing fancy. i have an older ts-570 sitting on the shelf doing nothing and i keep thinking maybe i could press it into service as a second radio. the antenna switching and the audio routing seems like it would be a nightmare though, both radios would be fighting over the same dipole unless i get a second antenna up which isnt trivial at my QTH.

does anyone actually run SO2R without a full station setup and still come out ahead versus just working S&P more aggressively on one radio? like is there a breakeven point where the overhead is worth it or am i just romanticizing something that makes sense for the big guns but not for a mid-tier operator like me

honestly the antenna problem is the real barrier, not the radios. i ran SO2R for a while with an FT-1000MP and a spare 756 Pro and the intermod between the two was brutal until i got a proper bandpass filter setup going. ICE makes decent ones, the dueling CQ type setup from 4O3A is what alot of serious contesters use but that stuff adds up fast.

if your second antenna is on a different band it becomes way more manageable. like running 20 on the dipole and having a 40m vertical or something, then you're not trying to transmit on two antennas that are physically close to each other on adjacent or harmonically related bands. the real rate gain from SO2R comes from the listening-while-transmitting thing, you're sending a cq on one radio and tuning for a mult or a new guy on the other, and when your cq finishes you've already got a callsign lined up. but yeah if you're spending mental cycles troubleshooting audio routing or RFI you lose that advantage fast.

for a casual contester i'd say get comfortable with your logging software's SO2R keying first, N1MM has decent support, before you invest in filters and switching. worth a try in a low stakes contest before you go deep on hardware.

im probably not the most qualified to answer the SO2R part but i'll say this — aggressive S&P with good logging discipline will get you way farther than most people think before SO2R becomes the limiting factor. like ive seen guys with one radio and a wire really clean up in the lower power categories just by knowing when to run and when to hunt.

the rate optimization thing that helped me the most was just learning the bands better. knowing that 15 is going to open to europe at a certain time and having a freq ready to jump to rather than reacting to it. also keeping a second window open in N1MM to see where the cluster spots are piling up so you're not tuning dead parts of the band. none of that requires two radios.