Twilight Zone theme.......
Well, I decided to go the other way. I created a new backup on the new iPad... AIR Dropped it to the OLD one.
Launched ST3 on old iPad and did a restore. It worked JUST LIKE IT SHOULD HAVE?
When looking at the files on the old iPad using the Files App... I did a select of the latest backup and it showed filesize as 2.4G. I did a select of yesterdays backup that has been giving me all this grief... and it was file size 0.
One thing tho. The old iPAD is a 16G device, In order to run ST3 I stripped it of all apps except what I only needed to use on stage because I could not even create a backup due to ipad storage limit. Stripped down iPad Settings Storage shows: 14.6G of 16G used. Thats with the backup file in place... I suppose there just was not enough room.
This was the reason for getting a new iPad 9.7 (6th generation with 32G). I still only run what I need....iPad Storage shows 21.7 GB of 32GB used and thats with 3 backups in place.