despite a crippling hangover I plowed through and fully assembled and tested a board today! It worked the first time! Super stoked I didn't make any dumb layout mistakes. I played around with diodes a bit too and found I like either none at all or basic 1n914, germanium and bat were too low output, they might be better with a higher gain transistor in the recovery stage though... I have 8 extras if anyone is interested in a pcb, I may make a post in BST later.