Hey,
Just to close the thread, I gave up on trying to make FTP connection work from ASCII. I wrote a to ASCII pass to create a .txt file. This contains the date specific file names I want to 'mget'. I then run a shell execute to run psftp.exe and pass it my usernaname, ftpsite, pwd, and txt file on the command line.
One quirk. I couldn't get the the usual format of shell execute to work, and ended up having to start my command string with "echo | blah". I've no idea why that makes it work but noted it from a previous thread and it appears to kick of the psftp executable correctly.