so ive been doing contests for a few years now, mostly single op stuff on 40 and 20, and i keep reading about SO2R and how it changes everything rate-wise. but every time i look into setting it up i get this sinking feeling like its gonna take me six months just to get the station wired up properly without the radios beating each other to death.

my current setup is an IC-7300 as the main and i picked up a used TS-590SG last winter that i was planning to use for monitoring but never really got around to it. i've got a couple of tribanders up at different heights which should theoretically help with isolation but i honestly dont know if its enough. reading about needing bandpass filters, maybe a 2x4 antenna switch, the whole logging software integration thing with N1MM... it feels like a whole project just to get to the point where i can even try it.

is it actually worth it for someone doing maybe 10-15 contests a year at the serious-but-not-crazy level? like i'm not trying to win a national plaque or anything, i just want to push my rates up and stop feeling like im leaving points on the table during the slow parts of a run. anyone gone through this and have thoughts on whether the juice is worth the squeeze

I went through exactly this about three years ago and honestly the setup pain is real but it's a one-time thing. The bandpass filters are non-negotiable if your antennas are anywhere near each other -- I tried to skip that step and the 7300 was picking up everything the second radio was doing, totally unusable. Fletcher or W3NQN style filters are what most people run and yeah they cost money but you do it once and forget it.

The actual operating skill is a separate learning curve from the station wiring and in some ways harder. Running a frequency on one radio while S&Ping on the other sounds simple until you're actually doing it at 150 contacts an hour and your brain starts doing weird things. I dropped my rate the first couple contests I tried it because I was so focused on managing both radios I forgot to actually work stations efficiently. Give yourself like two or three serious efforts before you judge whether its working for you.

For your specific setup, the 7300 and 590 should play together okay with decent filtering and N1MM handles SO2R pretty well once you get the COM port stuff sorted. There's a good setup guide on the N1MM wiki that walks through the radio control config. Don't skip the part about setting the SO2R audio switching up properly or you'll go crazy trying to monitor both bands at once.

honestly for 10-15 contests a year i'd say get the station working first and worry about squeezing every last mult out later. i spent two weekends debugging why my logging software kept sending CW to the wrong radio and that was time i could've just been on the air working contacts the normal way. not saying dont do it, just that single op well-executed beats SO2R done badly every time.

the rate gains are real though, especially in the dead spots. like 0200 local when 20 is dying and 40 isnt quite hopping yet, being able to keep a run on 40 while hunting mults on 15 during that weird transition window is actually pretty useful. thats probably where i notice it most versus just late-night grinding.