Well you did not make mention of the fact that your circuit was not firing before. However, by grounding collector of Q1 on and off it should pulse the lED with your 12 volt supply connected.

I"m not familar with this particular version, but other versions require programming the chip with the hex file and then uploading the curve through the control program otherwise nothing works.

Without HV you will not get any spark though.

As for 12v generated hv, yes, there is one. Depends whether you want to "mix" systems or just go with a complete working system.

Go to the GR8 discussions. http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_10662258/tm.htm