so ive been doing contests for maybe 3 years now, mostly phone, some cw, usually single op single radio and i do alright. top 10 in my section a couple times which im happy with for a guy running 100w and a wire. but i keep reading about SO2R and how much it can improve your rate and i honestly cant tell if its something a normal person can actually pull off or if its one of those things thats only practical if you have a dedicated station with filters and interlocks and all that sorted out already.

my current setup is an IC-7300 and ive got a spare FT-891 sitting around doing not much. the antenna situation is a 40m dipole and a vertical that covers everything else more or less. i know the main issue is keeping radio 2 from blowing up radio 1 when theyre close in frequency but i dont really understand how people manage that without spending a fortune on bandpass filters. like the steppIR guys with separate antennas per band have an easier time right? or am i missing something about how this actually works in practice.

also just curious if anyone has thoughts on whether its even worth trying to learn SO2R mid-contest or if you just end up making more mistakes than youre saving time on. ive heard the learning curve is rough and your rate can actually go down at first

yeah the learning curve is real, not gonna sugarcoat it. first time i seriously tried SO2R during a sweepstakes i probably lost a hundred QSOs net just from fumbling between radios, clicking the wrong one in the logging software, sending CQ on the wrong VFO, the usual disasters. took me probably 3 or 4 full contest weekends before i felt like i was actually gaining anything from it.

the filtering question is the big one and honestly with two radios on different bands its way more manageable than people think. if radio 1 is on 20 and radio 2 is on 40 the separation is enough that a decent set of bandpass filters handles it fine. where it gets ugly is same band operation and honestly for a casual setup you can kind of just avoid that. the dx engineering or w3nqn style filters arent cheap but theyre not insane money either, ive seen people build their own from kits for under a hundred bucks a band. the 4O3A stuff works great but yeah thats serious station money.

for what its worth i think starting with search and pounce on radio 2 while you hold a run frequency on radio 1 is the most learnable entry point. you dont need perfect isolation for that, just enough to hear whats going on. and yeah your rate will probably drop first time out but you learn a ton just from trying it in a low pressure contest first

honestly with an IC-7300 and an FT-891 i wouldnt stress too much about the hardware side, people have done SO2R with way jankier combos. the software setup is probably more of a headache than the RF stuff if you ask me. getting the two logging instances to talk to each other and having a footswitch or a way to flip between radios without losing your mind, thats where i spent most of my setup time. N1MM handles it but there are a bunch of config gotchas that arent super obvious from the docs.

one thing i will say is dont try to learn it during a major contest you actually care about the score on. find something like an ARRL 10m or a state QSO party where the stakes feel lower and just mess around with it. worst case you have a mediocre score but you figure out your workflow without the pressure