Looks like you've got a nice cook going there, steady as she goes!
Yes, overall, pretty good. I had kind of lost my faith a little after my last disastrous cook. About seven hours in, my pit started losing temp rapidly. I go outside to check on it, the damper is wide open, the fan is blowing, but the temps continue to fall. I opened it up and the fire was out?!?!?!?! Had never had that happen to me before with the Akorn / HM / RotoDamper before. Was totally perplexed. I didn't relish the idea of setting everything up again and running manual, so I ashamedly finished it in the oven.
The next time I went to cook, I set up as normal and noticed that the fire wasn't coming up to temp per usual. Got really mad and went to check on what was going on and, once again, the damper was wide open but the fan WASNT blowing. Looked at it and it appears that sometime in the previous cook the hot lead to the fan had gotten yanked so that the connection was intermittent. I re-soldered it and away we go. Now, the wires are firmly attached to the fan casing with a hefty amount of electrical tape. That isn't going to happen again.
The Akorn is just a machine in bad weather! I keep mine around just for cooking in the bad weather, UDS and WSM don't work as well with their thin body walls
Yes. Yes it is. I have successfully smoked with my WSM 22" in the very cold, it just takes a *massive* amount of fuel. So much so, I made a custom charcoal basket that extends almost to the bottom of the water pan. If I need to do large quantities, I'm covered.
One day I will be able to put my MicroDampers to use. I had originally bought them for my smaller guys (Akorn Jr. / Smokey Joe conversion) for battery-powered camping use but we ended up not taking them camping with us because life.