Mostly, the cooks I have done show that the Bradley does exactly what it was designed to do -- smoke/cook low and slow. I have pushed over a thousand pounds of meat through mine, generally at 10-20 pounds at a time.
Thanks for your post. Further to my information, the outside air temp. for my failed cook was 75F and I had it loaded with about 15 lb. that went in at room temp. Can you tell me what temperature you can regularly hit with 15 lb. or so of meat in your OBS; how long it takes to get to it; and, at at what outside air temp.? I ask because many (if not most) meat smokers want to get their cook fairly quickly to between 225-275F for ribs and I was nowhere near that mark. I'd like to know because if you do get your cooking temps. that high and/or get there quicker than me it could mean my OBS must be faulty. Thanks much. Cheers.
If there is a flaw with the OBS, it is the location of the door thermometer. If you are using it for your temps, refer to Habs' post.
Placement of a digital probe makes a huge difference, too. It should go right below the load. I made the mistake once of just dropping my temp probe through the top, hovering over a couple of racks of almonds. The temp at the top was far below the temp at the bottom, so my PID kept the element on way too long and I burned the almonds (don't worry -- I still ate them. ;-) ). So even something that was never cold can really suck up your cabinet heat. That's the idea, though -- for the heat to get into the food.
For your specific question, I don't remember before PID what my temp graph looked like for ribs. I charted it a couple of times, and I think I decided that as long as I kept it on HIGH with the door closed for that first three hours it didn't matter. Then I'd boat for two hours -- during this time, it stays pretty hot -- and then remove boats and finish, again not a problem since the bones are really hot by now. With my PID, I set for 250. With 2 racks of ribs on my last cook, it was there by the third hour. The Bradley does not like to be much higher than that, anyway, and there is a thermal cutoff in there (around 300F I think).
I do keep a foil-wrapped brick beside the water bowl to help hold heat.
If the element glows red, it probably works. If you still don't think it is getting hot enough, search for one of the troubleshooting threads detailing how to check connections and test voltage. Good starting advice in this thread already.