finally moved the coil outside

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Original poster: "Joe Duva by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <JDuva-at-BayTechnologies-dot-net>


Hello list!  great to have you all back in my inbox! :)
  This past weekend, I finally had the opportunity to move msot of my
coiling equipment from my 3rd-floor apartment in Annapolis, MD to a house in
Manassass, VA (for anybody in the area who's curious about locations).  Up
until this point, every coil I've played with and tested has been run
without a dedicated RF ground.  In fact, they've been runw tihout ANY ground
for the secondary, just sucking juice straight off the primary coil.
  The first order of business was to install the grounding system.  3 4'
copper ground rods were driven 4'2" into the soft & wet ground, equally
spaced 3' from each other, and connected electrically with 1.5" copper
strap.  The ground connection for the grounding system is sticking out of
the ground in the middle of all 3 ground rods.  Should it be coming out from
the side, instead?
  As it was windy, very damp, and around 40 degrees F all day long, not much
testing was done, but what i did notice was that the cold temperatures had
gotten to my secondary coil and shrunk the 4" PVC form enough to let the
un-laquered windings hang loose and stick out with the new-found slack.  The
~40 degree difference between the temp. that the coil was wound in, and what
it was outside that day made more of a difference than I expected!  Luckily,
there is a wide strip of superglue holding the windings in place on one side
of the coil form, and the coil is currently back in Annapolis, where it as
gone back to it's previous size.  No more slack in the windings (whew!).  I
plan on tossing a few coats of PU on there as soon as I go over it and make
sure there are no overlaps or kinks.
  I wonder what will happen if I move te coil back outside after the
windings have been varnished?  Will the PVC shrink so much that it separates
from the solid windings, leaving an air gap between the wire and PVC?  Or
will it all hold tight, even in the cold?  I was looking forward to doing
some tesing outside again before spring, but I don't want to risk the
secondary coil arcing through the air gap between the windings and cold PVC,
carbontracking, and ruining my work.
  I'm thinking that it'd be best to just wind a new secondary (a winding jig
would be nice!) in the cold temps and not have to worry about it, but...will
the expanding PVC break the 28-gauge wire when the temps warm up?

thanks for reading this far. :)
-Joe Duva