so i've been doing SO2R for maybe 4 or 5 years now and honestly i think i was just going through the motions for most of that time without really getting the rate benefit people talk about. ran CQWW phone last weekend and something finally kind of clicked and i wanted to write it down while its fresh.

the thing i was doing wrong — and i suspect a lot of guys do this — is i was treating the second radio like a backup instead of a weapon. like id have it parked on 15 while i was running on 20 and only really pay attention to it when the run dried up. total waste. what actually works, at least for me, is using radio 2 aggressively to S&P on the mult band while radio 1 is running, and you have to actually LISTEN to radio 2 with one ear the whole time. sounds obvious when i type it out but doing it under contest pressure is different than knowing it intellectually.

the other thing that helped was getting my footswitch situation sorted. i had this cheap dual footswitch and the latching on it was flakey so id sometimes key the wrong radio. switched to a proper setup with the microHAM and the difference is real. less mental overhead means i can actually think about strategy instead of worrying about the hardware.

anyone else have a moment where SO2R suddenly made sense? curious what clicked for people. also wondering if anyone has thoughts on how aggressively to chase mults on radio 2 vs just leaving it parked on a weak band hoping for a run to develop there.

yeah the footswitch thing is no joke. i ran with a dodgy setup for way too long because i kept telling myself it was fine and then id blow a run frequency by accidentally transmitting on the wrong VFO at the worst possible moment. embarrassing when it happens during a pile up you just spent 10 minutes building.

on the mult chasing question — my general rule is if i can work a new mult on radio 2 in under maybe 15-20 seconds i do it, otherwise i let it go and come back. anything that pulls your attention off the run for longer than that starts costing you more in rate than you got from the mult, at least until the later hours when rate naturally drops and mults become relatively more valuable. early in a contest like the first 6-8 hours i'm pretty ruthless about protecting the run. later i get more aggressive with mult hunting.

also the two-ear thing took me forever to really internalize. i actually practiced with the radio off just getting used to having one ear on a podcast and the other on something else. felt dumb but it genuinely helped.

im still doing single radio contesting and reading threads like this makes me want to try SO2R but also kind of intimidates me honestly. sounds like theres a lot that can go wrong with the RF isolation side of things too, like dont you have to be really careful about the antennas not coupling and blowing up your front ends? whats the typical setup people use to keep the two radios from interfering with each other when youre on bands that are somewhat close together like 20 and 15?