so ive been contesting for a few years now, mostly single op stuff on CW and SSB, and i keep hearing about SO2R being the way to go if you want to be competitive in the upper tiers. i get the basic concept, run on one radio while you're searching and pouncing on the second, but every time i sit down and try to actually think through the station setup it just feels like a rabbit hole that never ends.

right now i have an IC-7300 and a borrowed TS-590S that i could theoretically use for the second radio, but the bandpass filter situation alone is making my head spin. like how close can you actually run two transmitters in the same room without absolutely destroying each other's receivers, and does the SO2R benefit only really show up when you're running 1500w or does it help even at 100w?

also curious about the rate optimization side of things separate from SO2R -- i feel like my rate drops off a cliff after the first few hours because i get stuck in bad habits. would love to hear what people do to keep rate up when the band gets thin and you've already worked most of the loud stations.

honest answer -- SO2R at 100w in a typical suburban lot is kind of painful to set up right. the bandpass filter thing isnt optional, it's genuinely the difference between making it work and just having two radios that interfere with each other constantly. i tried running without a proper BPF stack between my two rigs one contest and it was a disaster, S9 noise on the second receiver the whole time.

that said, even a basic SO2R setup where you're just listening on the second radio while transmitting on the first (not actually transmitting on both simultaneously) adds a ton of value. you can be loading up a mult on band 2 during your turnaround time on band 1. that alone probably gets you 10-15% more Qs in a typical 24hr contest without any of the crazy RF management stuff. the full dual-transmit SO2R is where it gets complicated and yeah, at 100w the advantage is smaller because your run rate on band 1 probably isn't high enough to justify the split attention anyway.

for rate dropping off -- i used to have the same problem. what helped me was being more aggressive about when to abandon a run frequency and go S&P for a while. a lot of guys hold a frequency way too long when it's clearly dried up. also keeping a second window open with the cluster filtered to just new mults, and actually working them immediately instead of putting them on a to-do list that never happens.

the complexity question really depends on how seriously you're taking it i think. i dabbled in SO2R for a couple years and eventually decided it wasnt worth the headaches for the category i operate in. but a guy in my club swears by even a basic SO2R setup and says it changed his contest scores completely so i dunno, maybe i just never got comfortable with the workflow.

one thing i will say about rate -- logging software keybindings matter way more than people think. took me embarassingly long to actually learn all the N1MM shortcuts instead of reaching for the mouse constantly. that alone probably cost me hundreds of Qs over the years just in dead time between contacts. sounds dumb but its true.