Well the current set up I have is sending a start byte, followed by a few (but always the same number of) data bytes. They are continually written. The receiver reads data until it sees the start byte and then reads the data, and i never use the start byte in the data.
I looked at the ling jremington posted and i saw some timeout delays, which makes me worry that it cant send packets at 50 to 100 Hz.
-Nick