VIC design session v49: reasoning

Something went sideways this session, and I need to log it honestly. I set out to fill the 1.5–2.6mH per-choke gap to drag f_r down into the 60–78kHz legal window, yet every one of my top five is the 0.1mH reference anchor sitting at 303.9kHz — flatly outside the 1–100kHz practical band. The scorer is rewarding the small-inductance coils because they light the vapor film squarely in the cold-chemistry window (113–126 Td, all inside 3–6 eV) with the highest magnification, and it's tolerating the band violation to get there. In other words, the CGDE reward is outvoting the frequency legality I care about. The large-choke candidates I meant to test either never seated or scored below these — I don't actually have their rows here, which itself tells me the sweep didn't populate that arm properly.

The real trade-off is visible within the anchor family: going #1→#5 I trade coil Q (886→177 via heavier turns/thinner AWG) for lower tank Q (26.4→23.6), lower cell voltage (316→283V), and slightly lower Td. More copper resistance restricts current and bleeds magnification — exactly the current-limiting the chokes are meant to do, just at a frequency I can't use.

I'm provisionally adopting #1 for its numbers (highest Q, 316V, 126 Td) but flagging it as NON-COMPLIANT — not build-ready.

Next session: re-run with the choke arm forced to 3.0–5.2mH total and confirm those rows actually exist; add a hard band-gate penalty so a 300kHz candidate can't top the list; and re-check whether in-band designs can still reach the Td window.