I've hade problems since day 1 with my Tailgater, second one. Big fluctuations of temp, fire goes out, fire box fill to top with pellets, won't relight. Did a 10lb brisket yesterday. Started at 10pm the night before. Set @ 180, went out to check on it, the fire was gone. Kept waking up all night to relight. A POS!, have only used a dozen times since new. The next day, I thought I hade it going, then it died again. I'd some read something about the igniter position needing to be about 1/3 to 3/4" exposed in the fire box. I vacuumed the pellets out and noticed by igniter was fully retracted and slightly inward. Obviously the igniter was making a positive contact with the pellets so they were randomly igniting. I unscrewed the firebox and adjusted the igniter to about 3/4". It stay lit for a few hours but the temp was swinging +/- 30 or 40. Then I learned about the "p" settings. There's a round tab of tape to the right of the knob that says do not remove. You remove it and you can take a toothpick and push a little button inside the hole that changes the "p" settings or pause settings. Target doesn't do a very good job explaining the cooking modes where it apply's. I was lead to believe only on smoke mode. They explain the auger runs for 14 seconds and pauses for different increments of time. The longer the pause (the higher number) the longer the pellets burn before and smolder producing smoke. Mine was at p2, so I moved it to p0 the get the minimum pause time for the cooler weather this time of the year. The temp seemed to stay within spec +/- 25 running at 225 and 250 for the duration of my brisket smoke. Kind of felt the pause setting also effects the various cook modes as well as the smoke mode. I think target intends for temp variations to be able to get a smoky flavor. However imo, it would be nice to have more control in case you don't want a lot of smoke for some food. Then it would run a real consultant temp like a gas grill.