Hiya Trae- this really isn't a RTTY question, but here goes; it is possible 
for your friend (assuming he is a ham) to talk with his wife - even though 
they are seperated by a huge mountain. The best possibility is to use a 
repeater- in simplest terms, your friend would send out on one frequency, and 
the repeater 'repeats' the broadcast on another, related frequency. We hams 
have repeaters in many frequency ranges, including:
 50 mhz  145-147.3 mhz 222-224 mhz 440 mhz 900 mhz and higher
 (of course, we also run repeaters in the 10 meter FM band,
 around 29.5-29.7 mhz)
  Take care and have a good turkey day...Mike KA3JJZ
--- PCB15.1/2-GEcho 1.02
---------------