so ive been running SO2R for a few contests now and i still feel like im leaving a ton of points on the table. like i get the basic concept, radio 1 runs a frequency, radio 2 is hunting mults on the other band, but in practice it gets chaotic fast. especially during the first few hours of a big contest when the run rate is already high on radio 1 and youre trying to not blow the pileup while also actually copying a call on radio 2.

my current setup is an ic-7300 and an older ft-991a as the second radio, running them through a microham station master. the intermod isnt terrible but band combos like 40 and 80 at the same time are still rough even with the bandpass filters. 20 and 40 is way more manageable.

what i really cant figure out is the timing. like when do you actually pull focus to radio 2 long enough to make a contact without dropping the ball on the run. do you wait for a lull, do you just take the hit and let a few callers wait, what. feels like theres a skill here that takes forever to develop and i dont really see it discussed much beyond the basic SO2R explanations that just say 'practice'

also does anyone actually use SO2R for phone or is it mostly a CW/digital thing in practice

the timing thing is real and it took me honestly like 3 or 4 full contest weekends before it stopped feeling like i was just thrashing between two radios randomly. what helped me the most was basically training myself to only flip attention to radio 2 right after i send the TU and log the contact — theres a natural dead moment there before the next caller IDs themselves fully. thats your window. its maybe 1.5 to 2 seconds but if radio 2 already has a call partially decoded youre not starting from zero.

the microham station master should handle the interlocking fine but make sure your tx inhibit lines are actually configured right because ive seen setups where people think theyre protected and theyre not, you can still get the radios stomping on each other if the timing offsets are wrong in the software.

on the phone SO2R question — yeah people do it, i do it in ssb sweepstakes, but its significantly harder. on CW your brain can kind of half-monitor radio 2 audio while youre sending on radio 1 because sending is automatic. on phone youre actually talking so you cant listen to anything else at the same time. some guys use headphone mixing tricks, left ear radio 1 right ear radio 2, but i find it exhausting for more than a couple hours. most serious phone SO2R ops i know are just doing search and pounce on radio 2 only during deliberate breaks in their run, not true simultaneous operation.

honestly the 7300 and 991a combo is probably holding you back a bit just from a receiver performance standpoint during heavy band use, not saying its bad gear but when youre trying to pull weak mults out of radio 2 while radio 1 is cranking 100w on a nearby band the dynamic range situation gets uncomfortable. the bandpass filters help a lot but theres still residual noise floor elevation depending on your antenna situation and how close the feedlines are routed.

i run a similar two radio setup and the thing that clicked for me was basically treating radio 2 as almost purely a mult radio and not trying to squeeze run rate out of it. like yes sometimes youll get a mini run going on radio 2 if you find a clear frequency and a new mult comes to you but chasing that is usually a trap. stay disciplined, use radio 2 to snipe mults you need, get back to the run.

also N1MM has that SO2R assistant stuff that can help with audio switching automatically, if youre not using that already it might help with the cognitive load a bit. i think theres a config guide on the N1MM reflector somewhere