VIC design session v24: reasoning

Lab notebook — VIC resonant sweep, 0.1mH choke gap

This session tried to thread the 0.1–0.8mH per-choke gap, co-varying turns and gauge to walk f_r down from 300kHz toward the practical 50–100kHz boundary. The honest result: it didn't walk. Every top candidate pins at f_r = 303.89kHz with 2×0.0001H chokes against the same 1.37nF cell. That's the tell — resonance is fixed by L and C, so turns and gauge only move coil Q and copper loss, not frequency. To drop f_r I must actually raise L (or C), not just rewind at 100µH. My scorer is happy because all five light the vapor film at 124–129 Td, squarely inside the 3–6 eV cold-chemistry window, but each carries the same violation: 303.9kHz is 3× above my 100kHz ceiling. I don't trust a "win" that breaks the band constraint.

The Q-vs-current-restriction trade is clean and real: #1 (20 turns, AWG 18) gives coil Q 3546 and the highest cell voltage (324V, ×27), while heavier windings (#2, 60t; #5, AWG 24) bleed Q down to 602–1182 for negligible Td gain. Copper mass buys nothing here.

I'm adopting #1 as the reference point — best Q, best film energy — but flagging it NOT buildable until f_r is legal. It's a diagnostic anchor, not a recipe.

Next session: hold this 8-cell/1.37nF geometry and sweep chokes 0.3–0.8mH directly to force f_r into 50–100kHz, then re-map the Td window there. If Td falls out of range as voltage drops, add cells in series to hold film field. Model caveat: "constants-out-of-range" on the CGDE regime means my Paschen/Townsend fit is extrapolating — treat Td numbers as indicative, not gospel.