Totally understand the refund. I did a cargo run with the 408 earlier and for whatever reason it just decided to start making less and less torque at cruise in clear air. Ice vanes didn’t seem to help it at all (thought maybe it was modelling ice for some unknown reason), so yeah, it’s pretty unusable at this stage of things. I’ll keep you in mind if things improve. Like you say, you’ll have some valuable perspective to keep things moving if they really decide to fix it (and the 208) properly.
Back on topic, do let me know if you need an FO on your SME journey! I’m sure between the two of us we’d have enough class material and war stories to build the darn thing ourselves.