one thing that never made sense to me about using temperature and time in our programming is the fact that the clock starts immediately and not when the box reaches the requested temperature. Per your example, the .5 hour time would be up long before that temperature is reached. The box would maybe be at 150 and shift to program #2. Again, the advantage of making your 1st program hotter and longer would be that the controller wouldn't start cutting power to the element as early.