I will double check the wick setup I have and make sure it's just not too much.
It doesn't make sense that I get dry hits with the juice control wide open, and others have their working perfectly. I'll look tonight.
Thanks for the tips!
Here's been my experience so far. This is with a Kir Fanis tank, which has the top fill hole, running with the juice control wide open, so far on the "stock" wick/coil.
Filling the tank (via the fill hole) floods the Killer to start - this is because the juice control is wide open, and there is no negative air pressure in the tank yet. I would close the juice control at fill time to prevent this, then open as needed, but once the Killer is set in the tank, I can't get the juice control to turn - this is a VERY tight tank.
Once I clear the initial flood it works great...mostly. Occasionally, I will get air lock, and start to get dryness, so I open the fill screw for a few seconds, and put it back in. This gets the juice flowing again. Or, it did for the first couple of tanks. Then I switched to a thicker juice, and couldn't keep the flow going at all. Opening the fill hole would cause enough juice to feed in that it would vape fine for a while, but after a few vapes, it would get dry again until I let it sit for a few minutes, or I let in a bit more air via the fill hole.
I need to experiment some more to really get the feel for it. It's all about balancing the air pressure. Cartos are much less sensitive to this because the filler acts as a buffer - holding extra juice if airflow is a little too slow, or collecting extra juice if it's too fast. With a really air-tight carto tank, the top of the carto tends to get and stay fairly dry. With ones that are a bit loser (still sealed, but slidey), the top of the carto tends to stay juicy. Both can vape pretty much the same since there is still a fairly even amount of juice at the coil.
Also, cartos have a more restricted air path, which creates more of a vacuum effect when you take a drag, which probably helps keep juice flowing. In situations where things don't seem to be flowing with a carto, a couple of sharp dry pulls will usually sort things out, and you'll see the bubbles come out of the holes in the carto as juice displaces air in the filler.
With the Killer, with the juice control fully opened, this trick doesn't work so well. My next experiment is actually going to be to close the juice flow more to see if that actually helps juice flow by making it easier to create a vacuum in the atty chamber.
Also, I'm going to try a build with more/thicker wick to give more of a "juice buffer". When mine isn't wicking well, letting it sit for a few minutes will typically give a few good juicy hits before it starts getting dry again. I'm thinking extra wick will hold more juice and hopefully smooth out this wet/dry cycle.
Ultimately though, I think everyone is going to have a somewhat different experience with this depending on which tank they use, and how other factors such as the juice they use, how they build the wick and coil, etc.
I've had a couple of tanks worth where it's worked nearly perfectly, and it's been amazing, and I've had one tank worth that was pretty frustrating, and made me contemplate giving it a permanent home on my Darwin as a dripper without the tank (which it works rather splendidly for, BTW)
I know that got rambly, but hopefully there are some useful nuggets in my random musings to help some folks out with this.
