Well, as soon as I made up my mind, I changed it. I said:
The fuse block is going to go on the sidewall of the box instead of glued into the handle depression in the lid.
Well, no, the fuse block is NOT going to go on the sidewall of the box. I wanted to put it on one of the short sides for better stability, but the block was just long enough that it wouldn’t lie flat on that side. So yes, damn it, I RTV’d it into the handle depression in the lid. But my fuse block isn’t laying on its side, so I think I have a reasonable chance of getting a fuse out if I have to change it.
I also discovered at the training that, while I have a great packet TNC installed, it doesn’t do me a bit of good for NBEMS via FLDIGI. (Remember, I’m fairly new at this.) But I was able to receive and send using “acoustic” coupling (e.g., set my handheld next to the mike for receive, and hold the microphone about an inch and a half from the speaker for send). The next step is to install a sound card interface in the box, and I’ll probably use a RIGBlaster Plug-and-Play for that purpose, since it’s set up out of the box to work with the Yaesu 6-pin data port. I have one currently installed on my FT-450D for my digital work, so I’ll probably pull that and use the RIGBlaster Advantage that I bought a while back and stopped using because I couldn’t get the COM port splitter driver to work properly.
I’m dithering, then, on whether I should pull the TNC out of the box and install it in my regular go box (which also has an FT-7900 installed) or try to homebrew a 6-pin A/B data switch so I can have both in the same box. I can’t find anything like that short of computer KVM switches, which are typically too big for my purpose and switch too many things I don’t need anyway. But I might find an old one and take it apart to see if I can use the parts.
Or maybe I’ll buy a used FT-1900 and hook that up to the TNC as a dedicated VHF packet rig. I’m still interested in packet, but I think the need for a portable NBEMS-capable box is more acute.
I’ll have more pictures and a schematic after I do some cleanup (need to velcro-tie some wires and do a couple of other things before I’m done, but as proof of concept it worked quite well yesterday — and got some interest from some of the ARES folks, too).
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* I found a newer version of that driver last night and I have the Advantage working with the 450D now, but NOT with port-splitting; there’s no need for it since I already have CAT access via the RT Systems programming cable for that machine, and don’t need to run it through the Advantage. The one thing I dislike about the Advantage (and all of the old-fashioned RIGBlasters, for that matter) is that I have to run the output through the microphone port rather than the data port. But that’s a topic for another day.