Well, howdy there internet peeps and those that the love the smell of smoke in the morning...
Here's what my grill was doing at 6:05 am
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had to bust out the battery lights to get that going.
an hour later I had this on the grill...
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Houston! There is a problem... the smoking wood chunks I put under it weren't large enough to give it the clearance it needed on my 18 inch kamado.
A quick shower, and head into the big box store, I returned with a rib rack. I'm not into ribs, so I didn't have one handy.
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Now the brisket fits. Another two hours and I should be able to remove it once the meat shrinks enough.
You'll notice that one of my temperature probe wires disappears downward. It's not supposed to be down there. It was killing the fire thinking it was too hot, since the probe was touching the metal of the smoke deflector (a "Slo Roller"). That probe sent data back to the command center in charge of the vent fan.
Houston told me how to fix it, and now we're sailing right again.