I slathered the innards with veggie oil for the trial run/seasoning of my UDS. Lit my chimney starter and dumped a half-dozen hot coals on top of 10 lbs of Kingsford and 4 chunks of pecan (I am using the Minion Method). Official start time is 3am on Saturday morning.
I wouldn’t have normally got up that early just to season a new smoker but I also put a couple of pork butts on old faithful (Char-Broil offset) to take to a birthday party later Saturday night. 
From the start, everything worked perfectly on the UDS. I have 3 air-intakes (Two 3/4" nipples and one 3/4 ball valve) and I have 8 exhaust holes (3/4" diameter) evenly spaced in the lid. All 3 intakes were wide open when I started and the temp kicked up to 300 in about 20 minutes so I capped the 2 nipple intakes. The temp dropped to 250 and didn’t move for 4 hours. Then at a little after 7am, as the sun was starting to come up, the temp spiked up to 400 so I closed the ball valve halfway.
Al that seemed to do was stop the temp increase because I couldn't get the temp to come decrease.After half an hour and the temp still hovering around 400, I shut my ball valve almost completely closed. Still no change in the temp.
Then it hit me, when it was still dark outside, the air was dead calm. As day broke a gentle breeze started. So, I ran into the garage and got 3 pieces of 1/4" scrap plywood and some 2x4's and jimmy-rigged a windshield. 
The temp slowly started to fall and got as low as 300 but never got any lower than that. That UDS held at 300 until 2:30 Saturday afternoon (11.5 hours without having to add or stir the charcoal). It did what it was supposed to do and I love it. So if I can get the temp issue squared away, I will be one happy feller.
Can anyone help me out?
