820 in lab setup

I've tried setting up this 11Ghz  820 link in my hallway.  I've had anywhere from 30 to 100ft of distance between the two links on tripods, taken the antenna's off and on, changed power levels up and down, but I still cannot get this thing to link the radio interface.  I've had a reseller engineer look at it and he thinks it's been configured correctly and we even set to factory defaults and tried these steps over.  Loopbacks show the radios are working.  Trying to aviod Cambium support here.  

What distance should I have these things apart to test in a lab situation?  If too close, what will this radio do?  If my radio's got shipped as the wrong unit and the frequency I enter is invalid, how would I know if this were the case?  

Well... I figured it out.  

Make sure you know which side of the link is the low and which side of the link is the high.  Configure channels accordingly.  These things will not tell you that you are inputting the wrong TX like the unlicensed stuff.  

It actually tries to tell you, but it's not clear as a bell....

I suffered the same problem when I put my 820 up the first time. 

Where you able to get them to link without the dishes? 

Be careful of RF exposure. It's best to connect them through attenuators and flextwist waveguide.  Also, use the sickers on the devices as reference to determine which are high and low. Staging them in a lab to ensure they connect before deploying them in the field is a great idea. Glad you got the issue resolved. 

Agreed that the best way to do a bench test is with attenuators and waveguide / adapters, etc.    But if you are without these items, in a pinch you can use a couple rheems of plain printer paper to serve as an attenuator.  Place one radio on a table with the wave guide opening facing up, place a couple rheems of paper on top of it, and place the second radio (waveguide facing down) on top of the paper.    Make sure TX power is turned down to a minimum on both radios.  Not the most scientifc method, but it does work and mitigates RF exposure, reflections around the room, and avoids over driving the receiver.