thanks to Murata for helping me solve this.. really a dumb user error..
had the boards pointed in the wrong direction, away from each other.. as there was no doc, and only ‘make sure the antennas are pointed towards each other’, I picked one of the 3 possible orientations, and it was wrong.. oops
non-component sides towards each other. boards standing up..
SOOOOO much fun.. back to work now