You really know how to hurt a guy Dbakl. heh ,, yeah, the whole idea was based on not 'drewing" the frame at all. Sometimes I think it would have been a whole lot easier just to drew it! Seriously, though, thanks for the hints n' tips.
I did have a bit of a mis-aligned cage but I think most of the trouble was the derailleur sitting at near 90 degrees thus seriously affecting chain wrap, and, it seemed the pusher portion of the cage couldn't influence the chain enough...if that makes sense..to shift cleanly up through the cluster. Plus, my jockey pulley is farther away from the cluster given the dimensions of the Simplex dropout being slightly different from the Campy, which was exacerbating the problem.

However, I've improved the performance considerably. necked down the stop boss nub on the derailleur a bit more and got the angle to about where it would sit on a Campy dropout, almost, and it's cleaned up the action quite a bit.