this is what I have now. the tiny rail of the breadboard seems to be defective, although I tested it with my multimeter and it seems to be conducting, but then if I put the wire from the transmitting pic directly to the receiving chip leg then I could see something on the LCD. that fixed. I am sending 5 or 22 or 85 from the TX pic and I am always receiving 49 on the RX chip....
Mainloop:

Pause 50


Hserin [encoded22]
PAUSE 100

lcdout $FE,1, "input ", bin encoded22
pause 200


goto Mainloop

end