Well, everything came together about 9pm last night. The serial/usb patch cable from RS worked. Loaded conventional freq and had it running. RR allowed me access to trunked systems shortly after. I have not messed with the higher end functions yet and doubt it is a "pretty" download/install by any means...but its scanning.
I had read that FreeScan was easy to use but, with me knowing nothing of the scanning world, i really did not want to put the effort to learn as much as I have had to. So that should be a tribute to the software designer...if someone without any basic scanner knowledge can figure it out, someone in the scanner world should have no trouble...
BTW...FIL better damn well enjoy this after all this ;-)