[CQ-Contest] Minimal SO2R -- is spacing enough?

[Clive Whelan]

 Pete Smith wrote:
> I'm contemplating SO2R for the first time.  I have the two radios and a
> decent amount of real estate.  My question, hoping to benefit from others'
> experience -- do I stand a chance of doing this on CW, relying solely on
> polarity diversity, low power on the second radio and distance between
> antennas?  Or should I just assume the worst and plan on bandpass filters?
> For the second radio, I'm thinking of an R-5 or similar vertical, spaced
> about 300 feet from my yagis, running 100 watts.
> 
> Thanks for any advice.
>


I think the news is good. Polarity diversity is desirable but not essential 
in my experience.

I can presently run 400 watts into a vertical, and receive on an adjacent 
band on a horizontal doublet spaced about 60 ft ( minimum) away in the 
horizontal plane. Similarly another vertical spaced at about 90 ft provides 
similar results. I won't say that there is not a whisper of mutual QRM on 
any band combinations, but certainly nothing that would make me contemplate 
expensive filters. Sometimes I have to look at the run radio to make sure it 
is still on auto CQ, because the headphones are muted automatically while it 
is transmitting. Of course the second harmonic problem remains, perhaps 
filters might help there, although I tend to doubt it.

Now the not so good news! Will you get good "value" from SO2R? Well not for 
a while at least I fear. No doubt the aficionados will convince you that in 
the long term that success is guaranteed; it's just that the time scale is 
uncertain, and depends on one's own ability to adjust to the unique 
psychology of split radio listening. For my part I can certainly point to 
the nabbing of mults on the second radio, that I would not otherwise have 
got ( at that time), but equally I suspect that it is not beyond the bounds 
of possibility that I have CQed in the face of some poor S4 caller on the 
run radio who might have been a mult. as well. However that was not what you 
asked!


73


Clive
GW3NJW
gw3njw at gw7x.org
Contest Cambria-http://www.gw7x.org


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