Well done for getting the camera up and running. It certainly produces nice images. As you state, this type of 'Industral' camera relies heavily on its host software for configuration and, in some cases, even switching on. You are very fortunate in finding a friendly person in the company who was willing to help you. My Amber (Raytheon) Radiance 1 has arrived and is working. It does no need any host software to operate but I wrote to L-3 asking for any information they had on the camera (Raytheon gave them the archives). Nil response to date, not even a "sorry cannot help". Not unexpected though.
With regard to the large calibration error in your camera, that has me puzzled as if the cameras calibration files were corrupted it would not work as well as it does. No thermal camera suffers that much 'drift' in calibration over time. A problem with the cameras temperature reference is a small possibility, but I would have expected such to effect the cameras ability to produce a decent image.
I will give this some more thought.
Fraser