so ive been doing contests for a few years now mostly single op on 20 and 40, nothing serious, maybe a weekend here and there when propagation looks good. been reading a lot about SO2R lately and honestly it sounds like a massive headache to set up properly but everyone who does it swears by it for rate.

my current setup is pretty modest, ts-590sg into a trapped vertical, second rig is an old icom 706 mkiig that mostly sits on the shelf collecting dust. so technically i have two radios. my question is whether its actually worth trying to get a basic SO2R setup going or if i'd just be spending all my time fighting the RF interference and station management instead of actually making contacts. i tried running both radios on different bands during field day once and the intermod was pretty bad even with the antennas separated.

also just curious what people actually use for SO2R switching and logging integration. i see a lot of guys mention microHAM stuff but that's not cheap. is there a reasonable middle ground or is this one of those things where you really do get what you pay for

honestly for casual contesting SO2R is probably more trouble than its worth until you've really maxed out what you can do with one radio. the guys putting up serious SO2R numbers are running it basically full time in major contests and have the antenna systems to support proper isolation. with a trapped vertical and a 706 on the shelf you're gonna spend more time troubleshooting bleedover than actually running stations.

that said if you want to dip your toes in, the single biggest thing before any switching hardware is figuring out your antenna isolation situation. bandpass filters are non negotiable, 4O3A or the Array Solutions ones are what most serious ops run. without those you're just asking for a bad time regardless of what switching box you use. microHAM is great but yeah it's spendy, some guys get by with the band decoder stuff from Ham Radio Deluxe integrated with cheaper relays but it gets complicated fast and support is basically you figuring it out yourself.

if your goal is improving rate i'd honestly look at SO1R stuff first, are you running with a proper CW or voice keyer, are you using N1MM+ with all the rate tools turned on, do you have your S&P vs running strategy dialed in for different contest conditions. theres probably a lot of low hanging fruit there before you need a second radio in the mix.

the intermod issue you had at field day is pretty telling, that's the real problem with SO2R on a budget and it doesn't fully go away even with good gear, you just manage it better. i ran SO2R for about two years with an IC-7300 and an old FT-857 before i gave up and went back to SO1R and honestly my scores didn't tank as much as i expected. turned out i was losing a lot of time to the station management overhead that could've gone toward just working more multipliers.

where SO2R really shines is when you're running a pileup on one radio and using the second to hunt mults without dropping your run frequency, but to do that smoothly you need good interlocking so both rigs can't transmit at the same time and your logging software has to be driving the whole thing. N1MM+ does support it but the setup documentation is kind of all over the place. might be worth just trying it in a low stakes contest like a state QSO party before committing to anything hardware wise