so ive been doing contests semi-seriously for a few years now, mostly CQWW and SS, and im always reading about SO2R and how the serious guys use it to basically never have dead air. but every time i start looking into it seriously i get overwhelmed by the station engineering side of things — the filtering, the antenna isolation, the keying interlocks, all of it. my current setup is a 7300 and a 991A collecting dust and im wondering if just throwing them together with some band decoders and a decent filter setup is actually worth it for a guy doing maybe 8-10 hours of a 24 hour contest, not going all out for a score.

like my rate on a good run is maybe 120-130/hr on phone and a bit less on CW, and im not sure if the complexity of SO2R would even net me anything meaningful at that rate vs. just working S&P more aggressively on the second radio sitting there doing nothing. does anyone actually do SO2R at a casual level or is it one of those things that only pays off if youre committed to the whole setup and the operating discipline that goes with it

honest answer — SO2R at 8-10 hours casual is probably more trouble than its worth unless you already have the station built for it. the payoff really starts showing up when you can run a frequency AND scan for mults at the same time without losing your run QSO rhythm, but that takes a lot of practice to not sound like a complete mess on air. i tried it for the first time at SS a couple years back with two radios that werent even properly filtered and i was bleeding into myself on 20 and 40 when they were close in frequency, cost me probably an hour of frustration.

that said if you already have the 991A sitting there, it doesnt hurt to at least use it for passive monitoring while youre running on the 7300. just listen on it, dont transmit, find your next mult before you need it. thats kind of SO2R training wheels and it does help rate without any of the RF engineering headaches. the full transmit SO2R with interlocks and all that is a whole project, not something you bolt on afternoon of the contest.

the isolation thing is real and people underestimate it. i blew a preamp once because i didnt have the sequencing right and keyed up while the other radio was still receiving on a shared antenna. just something to keep in mind if you do go down that road, the interlock isnt optional its just the price of admission for running two radios simultaneously.

for what its worth i run SO2R in the big contests but i built up to it over like three years. started exactly where you are, second radio just for S&P listening, then started transmitting on it for mults only, then eventually got comfortable enough to do real exchange SO2R on slow band conditions. your 130/hr on a good run will absolutely go up once you stop losing time waiting for the pile to clear and just flip over and work someone else. but yeah its not a weekend project.