Using Linx RF modules ?

[dhouston]

with the antenna I'm getting all sorts of characters which must be "static" of course. So I guess that I need to have a PIC connected to the data out of the RX and programmed to only respond to the string my TX is sending right ?

Here's a picture to illustrate the problem.

The data out line of a receiver (i.e. output of the data-slicer) is shown in the bottom trace - the analog input to the data-slicer is shown in the top trace. All of the RS232 methods (HserIn, HserIn2, SerIn, SerIn2) wait for a start bit and then sample at the midpoint of each bit period. They will interpret the random noise on the left as data bytes - the output will be a series of random bytes.

From the datasheet for your receiver

• The receiver’s output may appear to switch randomly in the absence of a transmitter. This is a result of the receiver sensitivity being below the noise floor of the board. This noise can be handled in software by implementing a noise-tolerant protocol...

What is the data you want to send? How long are the messages?