UTF8, LATIN1 conversion problems

Hi All,

I'm getting some problems with UTF8 and Pgsql for some days. In the 8.3
version these problems became worse.

In the new version,

=> select convert(f0601_desc, 'UTF8', 'LATIN1') from f0601;
gives: ERROR: ... convert(character varying, unknown, unknown) don't exists

and

=> select convert(f0601_desc::bytea, 'UTF8', 'LATIN1'),f0601_desc from
f0601;
gives:

convert | f0601_desc
-------------------+----------------
\343 | ã
(1 registro)

And I dont know what to do with a "\343".

I really wanna do something like:

=> select f0601_desc from f0601 where to_ascii(convert(f0601_desc::bytea,
'UTF8', 'LATIN1')::text,'LATIN1') like 'a';
gives: (0 registro)

What should I do? I'm thinking create a DB with LATIN1 encoding, but UTF8
is better (should be :) ).

Thanx for help.

[]'s

Paulo Angelo