Hi fatwood,thanks for sharing your experience of the f3.
I am still very much in a pretty steep learning curve.. largely becase it felt like a new stove all over again after all the installation issues of late 2013 were finally all fixed just a few months ago. Then, to compound matters, I got a stack of oak, a lot of which was too high MC and had trouble for a while before I realised it was the wood and not the stove (thanks to help from folks here) .. More recently I have been trying to burn splits that are just too thick - boy, this stove didn't like them!.. So I am still very much still feeling my way 13 months later!
What I do notice with this stove is that, after reloading, I really do need to take the stove top temp up to 550 minimum, or even 600 (unless it's very windy out) before staring to close down the air, in order to get an even burn on both sides of the stove. If I shut down too soon, the burn seems to die on the rear left side of the box, but have vigorous secondaries on the right. Odd. Because of this I am finding that I need that extra heat I get by not having a full ash pan.
Consequently, I rarely see slow, rolling type secondaries, rather they always seems to be the full on flames from the tubes.. I wish I could get a lazy rolling fire...more relaxing to look at and better on the days I don't need a lot of heat.... so that's my trade off I guess...
Aye...still learning!