Hey guys,
Thanks for all your suggestions! Your suggestions to take it to a local club is brilliant. I think that's definitely the best call here, considering that someone there will know much more about the radio's functions than I will. I might test receive functionality on my own before then, once I'm done reading the manual. Already got my power supply and checked that it outputs proper voltage, just waiting on the antenna to ship in.
I should have probably bought an antenna analyzer first thing instead of an SWR meter, considering antenna analyzers have SWR meters built-in. Ah well, my budget for the month is a bit negative at the moment, so I'll have to give it a bit.
As for testing on the dummy load with a second receiver, I do have a Baofeng for that, so at least I'd be able to test the VHF/UHF, but I think I'm going to go with the "take it to a local club" option.