BG5JKZ The FT240-43, which I have from Taobao (around 20 of them), didn't seem to malfunction during testing. It gradually and consistently increased in value, and I even suspected that the magnetic ring might be faulty...
To verify whether the length of the twisted pair and the cable head had an impact, I also wrapped a standard, twisted-pair cable around another identical magnetic ring, and measured the standing wave ratio at 4 MHz. The result was 1.4, which increased to 8 over time. This suggests that it's not likely due to this factor.