I downloaded and built Qt, suing whatever defaults it presented. Took most of the day, but it appears to have succeeded.
I then checked out and rebuilt vaa3d,
I am attaching a zip file that contains the entire term session for this (maybe too big, but I hope at least the list moderator can get it).

The build still failed. maybe some paths have to be set. There is a lot of output, but I suggest you look for "Error" following lines of "===================="

Here is a sample of this output:

=========================================================
qmake -spec macx-g++ vaa3d64.pro " CONFIG+=x86_64"
make -B -j4
=========================================================
Could not find mkspecs for your QMAKESPEC(macx-g++) after trying:
    /usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.8.2/mkspecs
Error processing project file: vaa3d64.pro
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.
cp: v3d64.app/Contents/Resources/.: No such file or directory
cp: vaa3d64.app/Contents/Info.plist: No such file or directory
cp: ./v3d/vaa3d64.app: No such file or directory
Find released_plugins_more linker folder...
=========================================================
Now build standard vaa3d plugins
=========================================================

5dstackconverter/
===============================
Could not find mkspecs for your QMAKESPEC(macx-g++) after trying:
    /usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.8.2/mkspecs
Error processing project file: movieZCswitch.pro
make: *** No rule to make target `clean'.  Stop.

ada_threshold/
===============================

and it goes on.

So to find all the errors, start at the bottom of this file.

 I hope this provides some clue to what is failing.

Thank you again for your assistance.
--aryeh