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I was actually reading your thread while I was messing with mine and the SWR meter this morning. Seems I fared better than you with 3 out of 4 units working. I'm trying to file a warranty claim on the janky one (I assume they'll get back to me on Monday) since I'm outside of the Amazon return window. I'll probably hang onto mine and use them as loaners or something if I ever get nicer radios.

@SteveShannon Ah, beans. That's what I figured but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something simple. Thanks for your help! @Socalgmrs Interesting, I'll have to read up on that. What's not accurate about the SWR on a handheld and would they typically read high or low on an HT? I got the meter just make sure I didn't have anything Obviously Wrong (like low/no wattage or abnormally high SWR) even if it wasn't particularly accurate. Regarding the repeater, I'm about 25 miles out from it. Listening with a second radio, the repeater acts like like someone kerchunked it (I think that's the term). I'm not sure I have clear line of sight to the tower so I figured there's just too many obstructions for a 5W handheld to deal with. A little disappointing but I'm not too concerned. Gives me an excuse to build a base station sometime down the road.

Hello! I'm new to mobile radios so I want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong before I send my radio in. I've got four TIDRadio H3s, two GMRS units and two ham units that were unlocked and changed to GMRS mode. I've been trying to hit a local repeater unsuccessfully so I picked up a Surecom SW33 to make sure my radios/antennas are actually working correctly. Three of the four are showing a VSWR around 1.4 and an output wattage around 5W with the same antenna so I think I'm just too far out from the repeater to hit it. The problem is the fourth radio (one of the ham units) doesn't show anything on the SW33 when transmitting. Other radios can hear it transmit short range - I've tested it on simplex channels across the house and through some walls but nothing long distance - but the SW33 is acting like it's not doing anything. (Edit: Should note I also tried it with the 50 ohm dummy load that came with the meter and still got no output reading.) Are there other things I can check or change in my test setup or was this radio DOA and needs to be replaced? (Side question: regarding forum etiquette, should I have piggybacked off GrouserPad's similar thread for this or was starting a new thread appropriate?)