Single-Op 2 Radio (SO2R)

I decided to have a go at SO2R contesting, though the road so far has been long and arduous, and I have yet to really try it out.

Rather than invest a lot of money in a commercial SO2R switch box I decided to design my own, based on a simple design of relays switched with a foot switch. The design works well, once a few minor build issues were identified. In an attempt at SO2R with the Elecraft K3 and an Icom IC-746 it turned out that the 2nd harmonic from the IC-746 was just too strong and I managed to pop a PIN-diode in the K3’s transverter switching board.

Thankfully Elecraft were able to send me a replacement SMD part that I replaced and all was well. However, having been bitten by this I have yet to conduct any more attempts at SO2R until I source a second set of band-pass filters for the 2nd radio.

Since we moved house and have set up 2 stations I’ve used both sets of band-pass filters to allow for concurrent use of the bands rather than for SO2R operating. At the moment this idea is on the back burner and I am concentrating on improving my single-op single-radio contesting skills first.