so i've been doing contests for probably 8 or 9 years now and always heard the big guns talk about SO2R like it was some magic thing that doubled your rate. tried setting it up a few times and it always felt like i was fighting the radios more than working stations. QRM from my own second radio bleeding into the first one, timing felt off, all that stuff.

anyway this past CQWW phone i finally just sat down and thought about it differently. stopped trying to run on both radios at once and just used radio 2 purely for S&P during the gaps when radio 1 was waiting for a pileup to settle or whatever. rate went up noticeably, probably 20-30% more Qs in the same time. not doing anything fancy, no SO2R automation software, just manual switching with a footswitch.

curious if anyone else went through this kind of learning curve or if theres a smarter way to use the second radio that im still not seeing. feels like im still leaving contacts on the table somehow

yeah the learning curve on SO2R is real. took me a couple seasons before i stopped feeling like i was juggling chainsaws. what you described is basically the right mindset though — radio 2 isn't a second run radio, its an opportunity finder. you let it scan while you're holding a run frequency and then jump on the mults or new Qs when your run goes quiet for a few seconds.

the thing that helped me most was getting the interlocking sorted so the radios were actually protecting each other. without that you're just hosing your own ears and probably your front ends too depending on your antenna situation. do you have any kind of interlocking or are you just being careful about timing manually? cause that might be where the last bit of efficiency is hiding. N1MM has decent SO2R support if you're not already using it and the focus timing stuff in there made a real difference for me once i understood how to set the delays properly for my particular radios.

i dunno i tried SO2R once during sweepstakes and honestly it just stressed me out lol. maybe im not cut out for it. i felt like i kept losing my run frequency to other guys while i was off hunting mults on the second rig. single radio felt more relaxing and i wasnt doing THAT much worse rate wise at my power level anyway. maybe its more worth it when youre running a kw and actually holding a frequency for long stretches