Developing prototypes, the devil is invariably in the detail. As the RC transmitter has been out of use a while, I figured the firmware ought to be updated. That's done with the SD card, which in turn required an adaptor for an Apple Mac beside a card of only 16Gb capacity... which itself is a rarity nowadays.
None of this worked when it came to the download, and subsequently I borrowed a Windows laptop that did. For whatever reason the Apple appears to unzip the file in process and in doing so, does it incorrectly by skipping the folder that represents the outermost shell.
For all those out there looking to download Futaba updates on a Mac ~ I know there are three of us ~ dropping the UPDATE folder appearing after the download into one called FUTABA should fix the problem.