so ive been doing contests for maybe 4 years now, mostly single op single radio, and ive been reading a lot about SO2R lately and honestly im not sure if its worth the complexity for someone who only does maybe 6-8 contests a year. like i get the theory — you're running on one radio and hunting mults on the other while the pile is answering you — but in practice every time i try to picture my shack setup i get a headache.

right now im running an ic-7300 and just picked up a used 7610 which i was going to use as a spare but now im thinking maybe this is the universe telling me to try it. the antenna situation is the real problem though, i only have one tower and the antennas are close enough that i know ill get bleed-over. anyone actually done SO2R with antennas that arent ideally separated? and is the rate improvement even noticeable at the modest contest scores i usually put up, like im not chasing plaques here just want to improve

honestly for 6-8 contests a year i wouldnt bother with full SO2R unless you just enjoy tinkering with the setup. the rate improvement is real but it only really shows up if you're disciplined enough to keep the run going while your brain handles a second radio, and that skill takes a while to build. most casual guys who try it end up ignoring radio 2 half the time anyway and then wondering why they went through all the trouble.

that said, having the 7610 you could start with what some people call assisted SO2R-lite — basically just use the second radio for band monitoring and only switch over when you spot a juicy mult you need. no bandpass filters needed for that, just keep the second radio on a different band with a separate antenna if you can. the bleed-over thing is real though, if you try to actually transmit on both radios anywhere close in frequency without good bandpass filters you're gonna have a bad time. 4O3A makes nice ones, inrad too, but they're not cheap.

I went through this exact thing two winters ago. Had an 7300 and borrowed a friends rig to try it during CQWW and yeah the antenna isolation was a mess, i was getting so much rf into the second receiver that the autos were engaging constantly. ended up just using radio 2 for S&P on 40 while i ran 20 and that alone honestly bumped my Q count noticeably just because i wasnt sitting there spinning the vfo on dead air waiting for a break in my run.

if your antennas are on the same tower the band combo matters a lot — 20 and 40 together is rough without filtering, but something like 15 and 40 or 10 and 80 is more manageable because the harmonics arent as nasty. theres a good writeup on the k8cc website that goes into the filter math if you want to get into it. but yeah even a janky half-working SO2R setup taught me a ton about rate optimization just by forcing me to think about when to break a run versus stay put