Has anyone experience with multiple SIM cards and SSH? (/ril_0 and /ril_1)

I’ve been using my old Xperia as a phone server for SMS, but I wanted to throw in an old SIM card and use that for contacting people I had with that number.

Normally I just used

sudo dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.ofono /ril_0 org.ofono.MessageManager.SendMessage string:"004670...." string:"test_0" 

and so I tried

sudo dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.ofono **/ril_1** org.ofono.MessageManager.SendMessage string:"004670...." string:"test_1" 

The first command works and sends

method return time=1743410571.461773 sender=:1.7 -> destination=:1.256 serial=1136 reply_serial=2
   object path "/ril_0/message_779F8B2A27DF2C00F60177F09702F20EFCD92D25"

The second gives a correct response, but doesn’t send.

method return time=1743410585.874454 sender=:1.7 -> destination=:1.260 serial=1142 reply_serial=2
   object path "/ril_1/message_6B615A3B47EFA6AB1356ECBEB311CBDAE31C7C50

I checked the SIM status with

sudo dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.ofono /ril_1 org.ofono.Modem.GetProperties

and they are both OK, both online, registered and have identical SMSC.

Wondering if there is some command to set preferred SIM that is just disabling ril_1 at a higher level than dbus-send.

any tips very welcome : D

Also realised that the software interface has ‘Set which SIM to use for calls and messages’, I did try and set that to SIM 2 (ril_1) and then tried the dbus-send command again, but same issue.