[Elecraft] New SYNTH boards in Russian DX contest

[K5WA]

Since I don't have a station at home, this weekend's Russian DX contest was
the first time I was able to give the new SYNTH boards a good testing after
installing them a couple of weeks ago.  I realize this is totally subjective
because I don't even have the test equipment to "run the numbers" but from
an operators standpoint, it was just amazing to be able to copy weak
Russians fluttering over the pole after this weekend's flare incident.  I'm
in Texas and we don't see "East coast" conditions too often so I was really
concerned that conditions would be too frustrating to hang in the contest.
I don't recall ever getting pushed off a CQing frequency by a close by
station other than one guy's terrible key clicks that covered 25 Khz.  I
operated 23 of the 24 hours and was relatively ready to continue but the
rate had completely dropped into the tank by the last hour so I hit the
sack.
 
Beside the RX side improvement, the CW keying is now perfect (perfect for me
means not a bit choppy at 35+ WPM speeds) and reflects exactly the weighting
my logging software tells it.  This is another huge improvement after having
to previously play with the weighting to get even semi-reasonable code out
at 35+.
 
These seem to be big steps forward for the K3 and completely satisfies what
I'm looking for in a rig.  Yes, please order me another round of Kool-Aid!
;-)
 
73,
Bob K5WA