So these hiletgo 433Mhz's came in & were immediately busted. They reminded lions of the Ramsey FM10C FM transmitter kit.  Reception depended on if they were in the right position, what part of the board was being held, a finicky trimpot, tongue angle.  We were not doing that again.  Together with the ethernet module which ended up unnecessary, that was $20 burned.  Sadly, the lion kingdom's FM10C turned into a pile of rust by 1998 & was discarded.

After a bit more testing, it became clear that the receiver uses an AGC.  The transmitter has to constantly change or the receiver will just show noise.  Only in a few random cases will the receiver show some correlation with a DC signal.  It probably works on 3.3V.  It would be nice to oversample the receiver, but the micros aren't fast enough.  Hi on the transmitter shows as high on the receiver.  Low on the transmitter shows as low on the receiver.