How to send and recive data

Hi I'm currently in the middle of my first project and i just finished putting it together. it consits of a max232 chip and a SRF02 ultrasonic ranger(its in serial mode).

iv been going though tons of examples on the net but they are all to do with i2c chips and the ranger.

i am a programmer but i don't know c nor have i ever done device communications. so I'm a but stuck, I'm learning c now so feel free to give me code examples in that if you want.

now for my problem. i need to know how to send the following data to the ranger through com1

0x00 (the address of the ranger)
0x51 (tell the ranger to range in centermeters)
then i should wait 70ms and then ask for the results in a smiler fashion

0x00 (the address of the ranger)
0x5E ( Get Range, returns two bytes (high byte first) from the most recent ranging.) that was taken from the website i brought it from.

here is the spec link with all the hex code and probably more information that i have put in so far.

https://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/srf02techSer.htm

so how would i send the data to the device and how would i receive it. also what references(headers) do i need to make it work.

sorry if this was a but long but I'm trying to be thourough.

thanks for reading

Alex Wood