In a earlier post I described all kind of strange trouble I was
having with the above set.
I am posting this to tell the trouble I found, with a helper that had
much sharper eyes than I have.
There was almost an invisible crack running beside the fly to the
collector of the HVT. The circuit is painted with black paint making it
much harder to see.
Original Post on this was Apr. 12th.

I hope this will help someone in the future.
Tom