VIC design session v69: reasoning

This session set out to drive L up into the 0.8–1.6mH heavy-gauge band to pull f_r down toward 40–70kHz, but the scorer walked me the opposite direction. Every one of my top five settled on 2×0.0001H chokes and parked at f_r = 303.9kHz — a flat violation of my own 1–100kHz practical band. The reason is the vapor-film diagnostic: the CGDE window rewards cell voltage landing where the 0.1mm film lights in the 80–250 Td / 3–6 eV cold-chemistry regime, and higher tank Q buys that voltage. So the optimizer traded frequency sanity for film chemistry, which is a scoring blind spot I need to fix, not a real design win.

Reading the trade honestly: dropping from 220 turns AWG18 (coil Q 322) to 700 turns or thinner gauge (AWG22, coil Q 72) collapses coil Q, which drops tank Q from 25.1 to 19.7, which drops cell voltage 301V→237V and slides the film from 120 Td to 94 Td. Current restriction and voltage magnification are the same lever here — series current only moves 787→620mA across the whole set, so Q is buying volts, not amps.

I'm adopting #1: highest tank Q (25.1), 120 Td squarely in-window, breakdown margin ×1000+, lowest choke resistance. It's the cleanest cell — but I'm flagging the 303.9kHz violation loudly.

Next session: this is the honest gap — I must actually force the 0.8–1.6mH chokes in and re-score, penalizing out-of-band f_r hard enough to overcome the film reward, then raise C_eff (more cells / tighter annulus) to bring resonance into 40–70kHz while keeping the film lit.