Well, not bad. I put an ethernet cable around the study reaching out to the radio, plonked a cheap USB sound card and the Pi, with my old USB to Serial adapter into it and voila, it works with VNC quite well, CAT and the lot. There are future experiments to be made, like using something faster than VNC but it works, apart from 6m. At 6m the cables are getting interference and the TX'ed signal is horrible. Needs more investigation. Other thing to look into is the audio cables, right now they are electrically connected. That needs to go, all of that cable stuff needs to be replaced with the audio/TTL connection kit I'm working on. That'd give me both octo-couplers for the serial side and also audio transformers on the other side. Anyway, we'll get there.
Finally obtained my full UK license - it's an M0. Unfortunately I had to surrender the M1 but I guess I could have insisted on doing it on paper and re-obtain that, I've been using it for a long time now, but hey, I like my new callsign. All I have to do now is remember how to say it.
I packed the stuff, also picked up the FT-847, got into the car and drove to the hill nearby. Setting everything up in near darkness took 20 mins. Then I found that I left the mic for the FT-847 at home. Then the power cables acted. Then the morse key's cable snapped. Then the FT-818 wouldn't power itself from the car's battery. Then I got very very frustrated and depressed. Listened to 20m on FT-818 for a couple of minutes and packed everything up, drove back home. I am trying to be prepared, but every single time something goes wrong. Why the fuck is this happening every single time. I am truly saddened with today's experience. How am I going to get back to the hobby if I feel frustrated about it. Also it rained all the time. Not that I had a good start in the morning. This is 8:41AM