Problems with BS2 and AM-HRR3 and AM-RT5

gilabite

I recently purchased an Abacom Am-HRR3 and an Am-RT5. I am having trouble interfacing it with my BS2. The receiver Displays garbage characters no matter how I have it hooked up (tried hooking it staight to a serial LCD and hooked to BS2 I/O pin with the debug statement). I have checked all the connections many times and they are right. I have tried hooking the transmitter to one stamp and the receiver to another stamp and still only got garbage characters even when the transmitter was off (which it has done in all circumstances). I have tried using serin and serout to send the data to and from the stamps, and shiftin and shiftout. The baud rate was set right for serin and serout (even tried acouple of different rates). Can someone supply me with some test code that they know works so I can see if its something Im doing or if its the hardware. Also Im using homemade antennas. Ive tried using 24 gauge magnet wire wound how the abacom datasheet states 24 turns ( I dont know if this is the wrong kind of wire to use) and tried 17 cm lengths of solid copper wire. Could it be my antennas that is causing this. Any help would be appreciated