In the 18 months I've been smoking meats I have come to this conclusion:
I just don't ever have 13 consecutive hours at my house where I am not sleeping for most of them. Ever. And my family really loves pulled pork.
So what I'm thinking is that the propane has been really convenient for shorter smokes. Fish, ribs, etc. The really long ones, though, aren't working out because I just can't allocate an entire day to smoking meat. I need to be able to leave the house for a couple hours during the smoke. Can't do that with propane. Now, with charcoal, the worst that can happen is that something opens up the oxygen and my coals burn out and the meat gets wrecked, yes? At least that's not a fireball.