Quote Originally Posted by cropwell View Post
Even with strapping the base of Q1 to Gnd there is an e-v voltage of 10v with the switch open - curious... Putting a diode in series with the LED puts the emulation right, so I am going to presume that the circuit emulator has a large reverse leakage on the LED.
That agrees with LEDs having such a low specs for reverse voltage, usually only 5v.

So we can finally give m_c a definitive answer that might actually work! Strap the transistor base to ground via a large-ish resistor to avoid letting it float with the contacts open and add an ordinary diode in series with the LED.