The smokers do have a temperature swing. On initial fire up the swing on the high side might go higher until the smoker is hot. I say might. Since you are using a remote to monitor, does it calm down after awhile and become more reasonable? Also, the high temp might be a spike caused by the wood igniting. Kind of hard to tell. You might want to try a dummy load (small pan with damp sand) in the smoker and no wood and just let it run for a couple of hours and check to see if the temp swings are more in line with the specs.