so ive been doing contests pretty seriously for the past couple years, mostly single op on 40 and 20, running a K3 into a hexbeam and a verticals for the low bands. been placing pretty well in my category but i keep hitting this wall around the 800-900 QSO mark in a 24 hour contest and watching guys with similar antennas posting 1200+ and i'm pretty sure a lot of them are doing SO2R.

i get the basic concept, you're listening on one radio while transmitting on another, hunting mults or S&P while you run a frequency. but the actual implementation seems like kind of a nightmare. ive read about needing good antenna isolation, separate antennas ideally, bandpass filters, the whole thing. i currently only have one radio but i could pick up a used K2 or maybe an IC-7300 as a second rig without breaking the bank.

my actual question is whether the SO2R setup is even worth the effort and cost if you're not going to put in the time to really drill the technique. i feel like there's probably still a lot of optimization i could do on pure single radio operation before going down that rabbit hole. like my S&P to run ratio is probably not great and i know my logging macros could be tighter. does anyone have a sense of where the real rate gains come from for someone at my level

honest answer, if you're hitting 800-900 QSOs and feeling like you've plateaued, SO2R will help but it's probably not the first thing i'd fix. the biggest rate killers at that level are usually inefficient CQ timing, not knowing when to abandon a run frequency and move, and yeah the S&P ratio thing you mentioned. a lot of guys run way too long on a dead freq when they should be moving or flipping to S&P to pick up mults.

that said i've been doing SO2R for maybe 6 years now and once it clicks it really does change things. but it took me a solid year of contests before i stopped fumbling the band switching and actually gained rate from it instead of losing it. the bandpass filters are non-negotiable btw, dont even try it without them, i blew out a front end on my secondary rig early on because i got lazy about that.

if i were you id spend one or two contests really focused on logging efficiency and deciding faster. record yourself operating and listen back, it's painful but useful. then revisit SO2R once the single radio stuff feels automatic.

i run SO2R with an FT-991A as the second radio mostly because it was cheap and i already had it, and honestly the 7300 would be fine for that role too. you dont need the second radio to be your best radio, its mostly doing search and pounce or listening for mults while you run on the primary.

the antenna isolation thing is real though. i have my hexbeam on the main rig and a wire dipole on the secondary and they're oriented differently which helps but i still use the Array Solutions bandmaster filters and they made a huge difference. without them on 40 meters running the primary would completely wipe out anything the second radio was hearing on the same band which kind of defeats the whole point.

one thing nobody really talks about is the mental load. like physically setting it up is solvable, its the operating technique that takes forever to get smooth. your brain has to process two things basically simultaneously and it feels really unnatural at first. i still make more dupe calls when im trying to do SO2R compared to single radio. but in a contest like SS or CQ WW where mults really matter it genuinely helps.