It seems to be working fine now with SoftEasyTransfer, no problems with the analog dimming, and the remote scans all the switches OK.
I havn't tried the wireless range yet, but the last project using ET was excellent ( and at 9600 baud )
I am only using simplex for this project, it seems it will ignore any pattern of data that is not expected, and it has a checksum.....
It wasnt receiving every time, I slowed the baudrate to 4800, no different, but when I compared the Tx and Rx waveforems on the radio modules, I saw there is no preamble on the transmission, so the first couple of bits were sometimes ignored.
I solved it by transmitting twice, the first burst acting as a preamble for the data slicer in the receive module, and it seems to be working fine.