Final statistics for the night:
Version 1 - Colpitts stolen from G3RJV "sudden". Spectrum 2u6L coil + 2n3819 @ 7MHz
Version 2 - Colpitts fixed defective coupling capacitor. Specturm 2u6L coil + 2n3819 + buffer amp. @ 7MHz
version 3 - hand wound air cored coil + 2n4416. Design as per W1FB design notebook. @ 6MHz
Not sure why version 1 and 2 were as miserable as they were!
Next plan is to crank it down to around 3MHz and see how stable it is there. Then mix with a 4.915MHz crystal oscillator and bandpass it to give a stable 40m VFO. And then see if I can add varactor tuning to the lower frequency oscillator. And then huff puff no doubt.