I agree it looks amazing. I'll even admit better than the rotisseried birds I've done!
First question is to ask clifish to give an estimate of the distance from his rotisserie center to the coal grates down low. But I'm mostly intrigued by the "uncovered" nature used here...I'd have never even considered it, although it is the logical successor to the cowboy-turning-the-open-fire-spit approach.
So what's happening here? There are folks on this forum that would have a coronary if they had 20F temperature variation during a long cook. This is the VERY EXACT OPPOSITE of that. Every few seconds the meat cycles between being down in the extreme heat of the fire with direct infrared radiation from the coals/splits, to being at the top with maximal cooling from ambient air and zero IR. Can folks with experience spinning bird in both uniform heat (closed) vs. open conditions comment on flavor, skin texture, etc?
My feelings are that for cooking the bulk of the meat under the skin, the thermal time constant exceeds the rotisserie cycle time so all that counts in the average temp through a full cycle. So if the heat load at the bottom of the stroke is equivalent to a 400F oven, and that at the top is ~100F ambient, then it's like cooking at 250F continuous. But the skin and outer layer of meat is seeing that full heating/cooling effect, as well as the basting you get with any spinning. So it's the skin that I really expect to be different in this open configuration from anything I've done closed.
True?