Mike, this is a significant new module! I have the RLP434 and TLP434 and have not never able to get reliable/solid communication until now. I don't know if I had a particular fussy set of modules or it was something else, but I spent many hours on it. I had tried the Holtek HT-12E/HT-12D route, and various other encodings with only partial success until now. Your VirtualWire library is not only the simplest solution hardware-wise, it seems to work the best for me.
One small item in the library. When I run it on a atmega8 based arduino I get a TIMSK1 undeclared. I believe this notation is only valid on the atmega168. I changed it to TIMSK in VirtualWire.cpp and it compiled and ran fine. I suspect you just need to wrap in it in a processor compile-time check.
Thanks again! I'll look forward to the OO version!
-Harry