VIC design session v56: reasoning

This session was supposed to drive L up into the 0.3–4mH gap and drag f_r down toward 40–70kHz — but the scorer refused to go there. Every top candidate clung to the 100µH anchor at f_r = 303.9kHz, all five carrying the same violation: resonance sits ~3–4× above my practical 1–100kHz ceiling. That's the honest headline, and I won't paper over it.

The reason is the Q-versus-restriction-versus-band conflict. With C_eff pinned at 1.37nF by the 8-cell geometry, pushing L into the mH range is the only way to lower f_r — but at fixed AWG18–20 the added turns and wire length crater coil Q. The sweep instead climbed the Q ladder at fixed 100µH: #1 wins with 20 turns / 2m giving coil Q 3546 and 847mA, comfortably above my 700mA floor, while #4 and #5 show the decay — more turns, coil Q collapsing 591→325, current sliding toward the floor. The CGDE film lights at 120–129 Td in every case, inside the 3–6eV cold-chemistry window, so scoring separates them only on current headroom.

I'm adopting #1: highest coil Q, most current margin, film at 129 Td. But I adopt it knowing it's frequency-illegal — a driver problem, not a chemistry one.

Next session: break the C ceiling instead of the L one. Widen the annular gap or drop to 2–4 cells to shrink C_eff, so a buildable mH-class choke lands f_r in-band without murdering Q. Also sweep electrode surface ×2–×4 to push the film deeper into the Td window.