Hi Paul;
Couple of questions--What bands are you trying and having no success on?  Some bands right now are quite inactive and you may not hear much.  Secondly, is your antenna up in the clear, away from other objects and buildings?  If not, that could affect your receiving and also transmitting.  Lastly, check you AF and RF gain controls to make sure that they are set right.  Your AF gain is essencially your volume, and the RF gain should be somewhere around 10:00 or when it starts to measure on your meter.  Check your swr when transmitting.  If you are using voice the meter will bounce around with your voice.  Just keying the mic with not show as output on your meter.  Give those things a shot and see what happens.  You should be able to hear voice on 80 and 40 meters at night, and on 20 meters in the day.
Dale K8TS