The MFJ-2990 HF Vertical Antenna

Back in late May, I installed the MFJ-2990 HF Vertical antenna in my yard. To say I am impressed would be an understatement! I am very much amazed at how well it receives and transmits! I am getting constant excellent reports on my signal on all modes. I have compared it to my Alpha-Delta DX-CC dipole and the dipole loses by quite a lot. It does do a fair job of receiving but the signal strengths are just not as large, and neither are the signal reports from the other stations.
The instructions for the antenna say that you need to put down 16 radials, but I just installed an 8 ft. ground rod next to the base and that was all. Our ground in IL has good conductivity even in the hot summertime. The base is in concrete measuring 14" wide by about 30" deep. We used 350 lb of concrete mix. The antenna will withstand winds of 40 mph without guy ropes, but I put two ropes on it to be safe. It is on the east side of the house so it is fairly protected from the SW and NW winds that get pretty strong here.
I recently added a Tokyo Hy-Power HL450B amplifier to my station. Using the MFJ-2990 with that amplifier really makes a whopping difference! I worked a guy in New Jersey on 20 meters SSB a couple of weeks ago. He had a Mosley TA-33 beam pointed away from me, and I was hitting him with an S-9 signal off the BACK of the beam! I shudder to think of what my signal report would have been if he had his beam pointed at me!
Today I worked an Australian station, VK2KM, near Sydney and got a 599 report using the PSK31 mode and 40 watts.
I would highly recommend this antenna to any ham who wants something with a small footprint, easy installation and great performance. If you have one of these antennas, I would be interested to know your opinion.

73,

John, AA9UF

An Age-old Question About DX Stations.

    If someone in the ham radio community can answer this question, please do so and send me an e-mail at the following address: aa9uf.gercken@gmail.com. I would like to know why DX stations (stations outside the U.S.) rarely engage in regular conversations on the radio. I could probably count only a handful of times when a DX station gave me more than a signal report, name and QTH before they went away. What is it they are afraid of? Big Brother listening? Saying the wrong thing? Are they so inundated with calls from other hams when they get on the air that they can't handle the pressure to respond to them all? Are they so afraid that propagation conditions are going to change and signals will fade out that they don't want to be on the air any more than necessary? What is it???
     I thought we were supposed to communicate with each other. A "Hi and bye" contact is not a QSO in my opinion. They may as well not waste their time if that is all they are going to do.  Why did they bother to spend all that money and go thru all that work of setting up a station?  Communication is the exchange of ideas and thoughts and common interests. Where is the communication in a "Hi and Bye" contact? Sometimes I don't even get the chance to tell them what kind of station equipment I am operating before the DX station signs off.
     To make matters worse, I am now seeing stateside operators doing the same thing!  Are you kidding me?  Well, I am not putting up with that nonsense.  If they call me, I have a macro that says "no hit and run contacts, please." They usually comply, but if they don't, I will not QSL them.
     I have asked the above questions in letters to the editor in World Radio and QST but nobody has any kind of answer for me. If you have some insight, please let me know.

73,

John, AA9UF