Ah its getting late here so I'll keep it short.
Have been playing around with the RH_ASK library on an attiny84 so included the software serial library to output debugging data. Not got round to tracing down why, but when the software serial library is included the RH_ASK instance outputs its TX on the software serials TX pin and when waitPacketSent is called will hang forever.
As a guess the RH_ASK library is using the USART hardware itself so when software serial is included there's some conflict.... somewhere...
Anyway know its not much help to you but thanks for the info, should help me with my own issues (and maybe someone else)
Also virtual wire is a little out of date but still works perfectly fine. But if you've got atmega based arduinos both sides the little bit more ram/progmem used by the RH_ASK library shouldn't be an issue.
Edit: HAH yes, well have rx/tx working now.... will look through your code tomorrow to see if i can see anything wrong...
oh and side note, my tx Imgur: The magic of the Internet (now working... ish)