so ive been doing single op for a few years now and consistently placing mid pack in my section for sweepstakes and cqww. i keep reading about guys doing SO2R and the rate improvements sound pretty dramatic but every time i look into it i get overwhelmed with the station engineering side of it — the filtering, the antenna isolation, all that. my antennas arent great to begin with (tribander at 35ft and a 40m dipole) so im wondering if the interference problems are gonna be worse than the benefit.

also just practically speaking, how long did it take you guys to actually get comfortable enough with it that your rate went UP instead of down? i tried running a second radio during the last sprint just casually monitoring and i felt like i was making more mistakes on the run frequency than usual. felt like rubbing my belly and patting my head at the same time.

is there a smart way to ease into this without rebuilding the whole station first

honestly the antenna isolation thing is the real gotcha and with a tribander and a dipole at those heights you're probably going to have a rough time running 100w on both simultaneously on adjacent bands. the physical separation just isnt there. that said a lot of guys start SO2R in more of a search and pounce mode on radio 2 while running on radio 1, which means you're not actually transmitting on both at the same time and the RFI problem mostly goes away. that's how i started and it made a huge difference in rate without needing to rebuild anything. you basically use r2 to find your next mult or a good S&P qso ready to go while youre in a qso on r1. the mental load is still real but its way more manageable than full SO2R with interlocked transmit.

the comfort thing takes like 2-3 contests before it starts feeling natural in my experience. first one you'll probably be slower, second one about the same, third one you start seeing the benefit. dont give up after sweepstakes if it feels rough

i did the same thing you described, just had the second radio on with headphones one ear each and yeah it was a mess at first. took me most of a full cqww before i stopped fat fingering calls on the run freq. what actually helped me was using the SO2R features in n1mm properly instead of just winging it — the alt-tab radio switching and having the audio set up right so you can actually hear both without losing your mind. if youre not using n1mm or similar you're making it harder than it needs to be. also even with mediocre antennas the S&P assist mode is worth it just for mult hunting on the second band during your run qso gaps, you'd be surprised