so ive been doing contests semi-seriously for a few years now, mostly single band stuff on 40 and 20, and i keep reading about SO2R guys putting up these insane rates and im wondering if its actually worth getting into or if the complexity just eats into your operating time more than it helps

my current setup is an ft-991a and a tribander at about 45 feet, nothing fancy. i understand the concept of SO2R — run on one radio while the second is searching and pouncing or finding a new mult — but actually implementing it seems like a whole other thing. the station switching, the audio routing, the antenna switching so you're not blowing up your own front end, keeping track of two radios at once mentally... i dunno. seems like a lot to manage especially during a busy contest when you're already trying to keep rate up

anyone here actually made the jump from SO1R to SO2R and noticed a meaningful improvement in score, or did it feel like diminishing returns given the added complexity? and what was your first SO2R setup like, did you start cheap or just go all in

honestly the mental overhead is the real bottleneck and most people underestimate it. i ran SO1R for probably six or seven years and thought i was pretty efficient, then tried SO2R with a borrowed radio during sweepstakes and it was humbling. like yeah technically you can be doing two things at once but if your brain isnt trained for it you end up doing both things badly instead of one thing well

the station setup stuff is solvable with enough money or enough time on hamlib and an antenna switch like the DX Doubler or homebrew relay box. the interstation interference thing is real but manageable if your antennas have decent isolation and you're not trying to run two bands that are harmonically related at the same time. 40 and 15 is a painful combination, 20 and 40 is usually more forgiving depending on your filter situation

what actually helped me was starting by just using the second radio passively — like S&P only on radio 2 while running on radio 1, not trying to run both simultaneously. build up the muscle memory before you try to juggle full runs on two radios. your scores will improve noticeably even with that half-SO2R approach, maybe 15-20% depending on conditions and contest

the ft-991a might actually be your limiting factor before SO2R even becomes the question tbh. not knocking it, its a fine radio, but for serious contesting you really want something with better roofing filters and a cleaner front end when the band is wall to wall signals. i upgraded from a similar radio to an older ic-7600 and the difference in a crowded 40m contest was pretty dramatic, could actually hold a run frequency without getting stomped by nearby stations nearly as much

SO2R is great but id think about squeezing more out of your current SO1R setup first — things like rate optimization through smarter cq timing, when to abandon a run frequency vs stick with it, how aggressively to chase multipliers vs protect your rate. theres a lot of room to improve score without adding a second radio if the fundamentals arent dialed in yet. N1MM has that rate display that shows your rolling average and just watching that number obsessively for a few contests taught me more about operating strategy than anything else