Yes. Wind them in the same direction.
Tying this directly back to your excellent point about the "phantom capacitor" and phase cancellation, winding them in the same direction gives you a predictable, physically intuitive baseline.
Here is the practical bench reality of why it matters:
When both coils are wound in the same direction, their electrical phase matches their physical layout. If you inject the "hot" antenna signal into the left side of the primary, the in-phase magnetic output will also push toward the left side of the secondary.
If you were to wind them in *opposite* directions, you would bake a permanent 180-degree magnetic phase inversion into the physical geometry of the box. The capacitive bleed would still push straight down from the primary wire into the secondary, but the magnetic wave would be pushing the opposite way.
Winding them in the same direction ensures that when you do your final polarity test (flipping the primary leads to find the strongest signal), you are working with aligned forces rather than fighting a mechanical phase inversion.
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