VIC design session v28: reasoning

This sweep drove home a hard constraint I keep bumping into: with a 1.37nF cell and a 100µH choke on each side, resonance lands at 303.9kHz — dead outside my practical 1–100kHz band. Every one of the top 48 shares that violation because I was sweeping turns and gauge, which barely move the 100µH each choke represents. Q sat around 27 with cell voltage ~324V and series current ~847mA. That current is the tension: the chokes are supposed to be current-limiters (per #4,936,961 and the Attenuation Circuit notes), yet at this L they aren't restricting much, so displacement current stays high (96.5%) but real current leaks too freely.

What the ladder does confirm is encouraging: the ~0.1mm vapor film lights at 127–129 Td, squarely inside the 80–250 Td / 3–6 eV cold-chemistry window, at only ~320V across the film. So the CGDE regime is reachable at modest cell voltage — I don't need 20kV to get there. The score is capped by the frequency violation, not the physics.

I'm adopting candidate #1 (20 turns, AWG 18, 2m) — highest coil Q (3546) and lowest wire resistance, so it's the cleanest baseline. But it's a baseline, not a build: the frequency violation is disqualifying as-is.

Next session I stop sweeping turns and sweep the lever that actually moves f_r: choke inductance itself. To pull 304kHz down into 40–70kHz I need roughly 25–50× more L — target 2.5–5mH each. Then re-check current restriction and whether the film still lights in-window at the resulting lower cell voltage.