so ive been doing single op contesting for a few years now, mostly SS and CQWW, and ive been reading a lot about SO2R and how the top scores basically require it at this point. im running a K3 as my main rig and was thinking about picking up a used K3S or maybe an IC-7300 as a second radio. the whole two radio thing sounds great in theory but every time i try to wrap my head around the antenna switching and the audio routing my eyes glaze over.

my main question i guess is whether the rate improvement is actually significant enough for someone who is not going to be in the top 10 of their category anyway, or is it really only worth it if youre seriously competitive. like im usually somewhere in the middle of the pack in my section. also wondering if anyone uses the microHAM stuff for the SO2R switching or if theres cheaper ways to do it that dont suck

any thoughts appreciated, been going back and forth on this for a while

honestly for mid-pack scores SO2R is probably more distraction than help until you really have your single radio technique dialed in. the guys making SO2R work well have usually been contesting for decades and they can almost run both radios without thinking about it. if you're still working on rate optimization on one radio, adding a second one just splits your attention in a bad way during a run.

that said if you want to try it anyway the microHAM SO2R box is the gold standard but it is not cheap. ive seen people do decent SO2R setups with a station master deluxe and some careful antenna planning that cost a lot less. the antenna isolation piece is really where it gets complicated, you cant just plug in two radios and go, the intermod will make you miserable. bandpass filters are not optional they're mandatory. W3NQN or Array Solutions bandpass filters are what most serious contesters run, some people diy them but that's its own rabbit hole

what antennas are you working with? that changes the answer a lot

I tried a ghetto SO2R setup a couple years ago with an old TS-590 as the second radio and honestly it was kind of a mess but i learned a ton. the keying interlock stuff is what trips people up, you really dont want to transmit on both radios at the same time or bad things happen. there is software that handles this, N1MM has SO2R support built in and it works pretty well once you configure it but getting the COM port assignments and focus switching right took me like an entire afternoon of head scratching

the rate improvement even doing it badly was noticeable though. being able to S&P on one radio while running a frequency on the other, even if i was clumsy about it, probably added 10-15% to my score in CQWW last year. not enough to move me up in the rankings but it felt like progress. i say try it if you have the second radio sitting around, worst case you learn what not to do