so ive been doing contests for about 4 years now, mostly single op single radio and ive been placing pretty decently in my region but i keep hitting this wall where my rate just dies mid-contest, usually somewhere around hour 6-8 when the band i'm running starts to thin out and im sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for conditions to improve instead of actually working anybody

been reading a lot about SO2R and watching some of the contest recordings from guys like K3LR and the big multi-op stations and its obvious they're doing something completely different than what i'm doing in terms of keeping the rate up. my question is whether SO2R is actually worth the investment and complexity for someone at my level or if im just going to be adding a ton of overhead and making my score worse while i figure it out

current setup is an IC-7300 and a tribander at 45ft plus a 40m dipole. i know the second radio situation gets complicated fast with filtering and bandpass stuff, and i honestly dont know where to even start with that side of it. is there a sane way to do this without spending another few thousand dollars on a second complete station and a full set of bandpass filters

honest answer -- SO2R has a pretty steep learning curve and if youre still working on your single radio operating fundamentals it can actually hurt your score before it helps. the guys making SO2R work well have their S&P and running rhythm so dialed in they can do it almost on autopilot, which frees up mental bandwidth for managing the second radio. if youre still thinking consciously about exchange timing and dupe checking youre probably not ready for it to help you yet

that said the mid-contest rate slump you're describing is real and SO2R is exactly the solution for it. what i'd suggest is start by just getting a second receiver going, even just a cheap SDR or an old HF rig you can listen on, and practice keeping ears on a second band without transmitting on it. just get used to monitoring two places at once. that alone changed how i think about band transitions and it costs almost nothing if you already have any kind of spare radio laying around

the filter situation is serious though, dont underestimate it. i tried running SO2R on the cheap with just a couple of relays and a homebrew setup and i either had desense issues or was so conservative with the setup that i wasnt actually getting any benefit. the Array Solutions or Dunestar stuff isnt cheap but its not optional if you want to actually transmit on both radios simultaneously

The rate wall around hour 6-8 is usually a band opening question more than an SO2R question in my experience. What bands are you working and what time of the contest does this happen? Because if you're running 15m and it closes on you and your 40m antenna isn't optimized you might just be losing to antenna more than operating strategy.

Not saying SO2R isn't useful, it definitely is, but i've seen guys add the complexity and their score didn't really move because the limiting factor was somewhere else. For a tribander at 45ft you might get more bang for your buck from a better low band antenna or even just really nailing your band change timing based on propagation rather than waiting until the rate drops to nothing before you move.