Things seem to be going OK, but I won't know until it flies, or until one of the steps fails to work. Step 1 had a definite preference for one of the 3 static files, so I used that one only.
For step 2, I again tried using all 3 of the static files, but it wouldn't complete the step. From that point on, I used only the one static file that step 1 preferred.
Step 3 took 4 iterations to stop dropping significantly.
Step 4a is running now with the MAE dropping very slowly, but steadily at 390 loops and counting.
Gotta love that i7 CPU
Rusty