A little warning. LabVIEW is not using UTF8 encoding itself under Windows but your local ANSI code page. Not a problem if you only use the standard 7-bit ASCII codes but can give you weird results if you try to send extended ASCII characters. More correct would be to use ANSIEncoding.
Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog 
DEMO, Electronic and Mechanical Support department, room 36.LB00.390