so ive been doing contests seriously for maybe 3 years now and im pretty comfortable with single radio operating, usually pulling decent numbers in things like CQWW and sweepstakes. but i keep reading about SO2R and watching some of the top scores and wondering if i should even bother going down that road or if its just one of those things that sounds better than it actually is for someone not running a full station

my current setup is an IC-7610 which obviously has the dual receiver built in so i already do some S&P on the sub while running on the main, but actual SO2R with two radios and all the band switching and audio management seems like a completely different animal. ive talked to a couple guys at the club who do it and they say the learning curve is pretty brutal and it actually tanks your rate initially before it gets better

anybody gone through this transition and have thoughts on whether the juice is worth the squeeze for someone doing maybe 10-15 contests a year but not trying to win any plaques or anything, just trying to improve

honest answer — for casual improvement SO2R is probably more headache than its worth unless you really enjoy the technical side of setting it up. the gains are real at the top end but those guys are also spending 48 hours in the chair and every QSO counts. if youre doing 10-15 contests a year and not chasing plaques, you'd probably get more rate improvement just working on your CW speed if thats your mode, or dialing in your run frequency strategy and learning when to actually abandon a pileup instead of sitting there forever

that said the 7610 dual receiver thing you mentioned IS worth exploiting more aggressively. a lot of people have it and barely use it. getting comfortable monitoring a second frequency while running took me probably 5 or 6 contests to feel natural but it did noticeably help my multiplier count without any of the SO2R hardware pain

yeah i tried going SO2R a couple years back and honestly the antenna interaction alone nearly drove me crazy before i even got to the operating part. had an ICom and a Kenwood running and the IMD from the second radio was just trashing the first receiver even with bandpass filters, ended up spending way more time troubleshooting than actually contesting that whole season

if you do decide to go for it look at the Dunestar or Array Solutions bandpass filters early, dont try to cheap out there like i did. also whatever logging software youre on, N1MM has the SO2R integration built in pretty well now but you gotta actually read the documentation which i obviously did not do the first time