andy798

Did you manage to find any suppliers of smoking wood chunks?

I'm also in the Liverpool area (Widnes) and haven't managed to find anyone local.

Dobbies in Speke are OK as they stock most of the Weber stuff, so at least I have got somewhere local for briquettes

I have also purchased a frontier recently and had similar issues. On my first smoke (with water in the pan) I could get the temp to about 200 but not much higher.

I replaced the water with sand and it seems a lot easier to control the temps now. Can get temps a lot higher (I had upto 290F) and it seems fairly easy to maintain 225-250 using the bottom vents.

I have seen a few people using deflector plates (not sure if that's the correct name, basically a round piece of steel cut to the diameter of the smoker, with some holes drilled into it to allow heat through) directly above the charcoal, i might look into getting one made and do some testing with it. Does anyone have any experience with these on a Pro Q?

Another option could be to purchase the Pro Q Plancha and use that instead of the pan.