Congratulations Jon,
The box you bought sounds like some of the broadcast gear we utilize for remote broadcasts. I am not real familiar with them (I'm the dinosaur RF engineer taking care of the tube type transmitters almost as old as Lew, almost) but have seen them in the field. I know the ones used in broadcast are several K$ each and work well except for dropping calls.
I spoke with one of the cell techs at one of my tower sites last week and he confirmed that analog cellular will, for all intents and purposes "stop working" in February of 2008. Thats the federal mandate for continued analog service. So the bag phones will be history soon there after. He stated analog cell phones account for less than 2% of the total traffic on cellular.
How about posting the brand and model of the equipment you found. I'd like to compare it to what Clear Channel buys.
It was good meeting you in Titusville.
Mike K