Hi Scott,
For some reason, I have a habit of setting "--wgetproxy" manually on the command line when I run pca so maybe that's why things have worked in the past even though I didn't have "https_proxy" set in wgetrc?
Yes, that's likely. PCA deals with the proxy setting in a different way than wget: Depending on whether it's accessing an HTTP or HTTPS URL, it will set either http_proxy or https_proxy to the value defined with "--wgetproxy".
Theoretically it doesn't matter whether you configure the proxy with PCA's "wgetproxy" option or with wget's "http_proxy" and "https_proxy" options. In your case using /.wgetrc is probably better, as you need to set "proxy-user" and "proxy-passwd" as well. Configuring these settings in a wgetrc file also has the advantage that wget will also work when used outside of PCA.
BTW: if it wasn't clear, my current problem has been solved [dumb user error].
I'm glad to hear that, especially as it turned out not to be a problem with PCA or Oracle's server :)
Martin.