We are working on a solution to bypass the calibration routine to speed up lock times.
This is just a property of the evaluation software, not the chip, right? It looks like clearing R0 bit 21 (AUTOCAL) would disable the VCO band change logic.
It might be nice if the band boundary frequencies could be documented in the next rev of the data sheet so software can tell when to re-enable autocalibration. Otherwise, stepped sweep generation use cases are going to be a problem.