Save some pain.....discovered that kmaps.tce loaded and bootlocal.sh containing loadkmap......etc worked ok within a terminal and Opera but rdesktop still using en-us keymap.
Solution = rdesktop needs -k en-gb, or appropriate keymap ( list found in /usr/local/share/rdesktop/keymaps/ ) passed to it.
eg. rdesktop -k en-gb ip/address/of/windoze/box
PS. I love this distro......thanks Robert !!!