VIC design session v102: reasoning

Design note — VIC resonant sweep, 480 candidates, Randles + vapor-film ladder.

The sweep was supposed to pull f_r into 55–75 kHz on tighter AWG24 chokes, but every surviving candidate landed at 94.87 kHz on 0.5 mH / 900–1150-turn AWG22 chokes. That's the honest result: the scorer preferred the higher-Q, higher-magnification corner and paid for it in frequency band. I don't fully trust the reported knobs matching the intent — worth a flag next session.

The core trade-off is clean. Coil Q climbs from 32 (1150 t) to 40.8 (900 t) as I shed turns, and tank Q rides 6.7→7.0, lifting V_cell from 1005 to 1053 V at a 150 V drive. But that's the wrong direction on the diagnostic that matters: the vapor-film lights at 401–420 Td, regime townsend-avalanche — well ABOVE the 80–250 Td / 3–6 eV cold-chemistry window I'm scoring toward. Higher Q here means hotter film, not more CGDE. The 150 V drive also overshot the adopted 60 V sub-breakdown level; breakdown margin stays huge (×454) so no violation, but the Td tells me I'm past the useful window.

Current story: 1.77 A circulating (rate the tank wire/switch for it), average input only 35 mA at 2% duty. Faradaic leakage at peak is enormous (1.5 A, leak score 0.00) — EDL is 89.5% displacement, but the leakage half is unacceptable until inhibited.

Adopting #1: lowest duty (2%, 35 mA average), highest Q, same score as #2/#3. Next session: drop drive to 60 V and re-tighten chokes to actually reach 55–75 kHz, targeting film Td DOWN into 150, not up. Q is not the objective — the window is.