sure, this can be removed. I originally wanted to remove the line below, but then tox failed because it expected some other values than just a default. Do you want me to submit a patch, or can you do it while adding to the branch?
If you can shoot me a fresh one with that line removed, that'd be my preference.
Actually, we should find a way to use a default step value when a channel is freshly used, otherwise the previously used values (memory residues) will be written. As you stated yourself, VX-8 does a pretty poor job in cleaning memories when a channel is erased.
The set_memory() routine should always set the tune step in the radio memory the first time it goes from empty to used, so I'm not sure this is really a problem. However, get_memory() should definitely gracefully handle the case where those bits are in an unsupported value.
Thanks!
--Dan