mauried:
How are you receiving the data.
Are you using a usart in the controller.
If so, the broadband noise simply causes buffer overruns and the usart will lock up and produce nothing.
You have to check for buffer overruns , and then clear the usart buffers when they occurr.
As I said, I've tried using a digital pin through VirtualWire and using it's rx receiving functions as well as plugging it directly into the rx of the arduino board. At which time I also attempted using Serial.read to get any data from it that might be coming in. In both cases there is absolutely nothing.
By the way, I think the VirtualWire library already handles error checking and such on transmissions that are sent and received through it. Possibly even some form of this manchester code you are talking about. Every single example I can find using the VirtualWire library shows it working with simply the library, no other extra code or preambles or anything of the sort.
I really think my receivers simply aren't working, but I don't know how to find out. If it were overloading the uart buffer then I should be getting some kind of signal on the output pin of the receiver but I'm not. I hooked a multimeter to it and I'm not getting a single blip in voltage or anything. And if the receivers aren't working, I have no way to figure out if the transmitters are working or not as well.
EDIT:
And yes when I attempted to use the rx pin directly I set Serial to run in 4800 bps mode since that is what the transmitter and receiver are rated at.