My original prototype for the all-band radio module bombed, as I left the SENB pin floating. This was especially stupid, as SENB designates the I2C address for the chip (0 = 0x11, 1 = 0x63) so by leaving it floating the various fields and currents in the surrounding silicon could and did cause the address to fluctuate, making communication with the device impossible. Literally one millimeter away from the ground plane lay the SENB pad, and given the weird topology of the Si4735 there was no way I could use a botch wire to solve the problem, so the board was a total failure. 

But, the fix was both easy and obvious, so I attached SENB to ground like I should have in the first place in KiCAD and ordered the boards from JLCPCB. I soldered everything together, attached the board to a Pico 2 W, and the chip showed up on the i2c scanning sketch I loaded at 0x11. I also found an Arduino library and corresponding example files that provide rudimentary control over the radio's functionality, but unfortunately while the radio was talking to the Pico, it wasn't able to tune to anything. After some digging, I found a short checklist of things to check when the radio isn't starting up properly. As I was walking down this checklist I discovered that the crystal's load capacitors should be 22 pF each, while I had 100 nF caps installed. That's 4600x more capacitance than intended, so why did I do that? Well, 1) I don't have any 22 pF SMD caps, so I guess I just subbed them in for some reason? Frankly can't remember making any of these decisions but that's what I get for not keeping good notes. In any event, I soldered some 22 pF THT caps onto the pads, and this worked quite well. The radio started up immediately in FM mode and tuned to the default, complete with an analog audio stream. Awesome, I finally got something to work again! 

The radio was able to do FM quite well with the antenna I chose for it, but the AM antenna idea needs work along with the shortwave circuit. However, the purpose of this board was to provide a platform for minimal functionality, and this is that minimum functionality so I'll take my dopamine hit please and thank you! With this and the keyboard prototypes complete, and the screen issue being solved by relying on Waveshare, all that's left is to produce the power system using a 2S cell.