SUCCESS!! THank you all so much for your help.
God knows how long this would have taken me otherwise. But now I have one Arduino decoding the remote IR signal, passing the key to the serial link, and a second Arduino receiving the code and driving the IR emitter with it. Now all that remains is to replace the USB with the RF link, but now that I have a "coordinator" on the network, what can possibly go wrong? But since then I will no longer be able to see what is being transmitted (will I?) this would appear to be the last step.
The cool term is great too, a big help with all this.
Here is the code that retrieves the key and drives the emitter:
IRsend irsend;
union {
unsigned long UL;
byte B[4];
} myNumber;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600); // opens serial port, sets data rate to 9600 bps
}
void loop() {
if (Serial.available() > 0) {
for (int x = 0; x < 4; x++){
myNumber.B[x] = Serial.read();
}
Serial.print(myNumber.UL, HEX);
}
irsend.sendNEC(myNumber.UL, 32);
delay(10000);
}