Just finished my 3rd brew in this yesterday (an ESB). I tried the grain conditioning, a coarser crush (0.04ish), and switched out to a bag that was also coarser. No mash issues - which was great! I had a thinner mash too (and no wheat malt this time, which I am sure was a factor as well).
Regarding the temps: I had a probe sitting in the middle of the grain bed to compare against what the wort hog showed. After mashing in, the temperature reported from the grain bed probe dropped quite a bit. This change in temperature was *not* show on the wort hog probe as it's close to the element and not in grain bed itself. So I boosted the mash temp a few degrees and got to stirring intermittently. After 20ish minutes I brought the wort hog temp back down to my planned mash temp and after that the grain bed probe was reporting to within 0.5 deg of the wort hog temp. So keep in mind the wort hog temp most definitely != the grain temp. This should be easy to account for by adjusting the strike water temp up a bit and then backing down the temp on the wort hog following mashing in. You should get really close and stay there throughout the mash.
My brewhouse efficiency was pretty crummy this brew, around 58-60%. I was hoping for a 1.055 OG brew using about 12.44 lbs of malt mashed at 151 degF with a 60min boil. I realized this wasn't going to happen and extended the boil an extra 10mins and feebly tossed in a cup of DME (didn't have much on hand). Ended up at about 1.050 for 5.5 gal into the fermentor. It's still within style parameters and not a big deal. I would like to get that up to 70% or so and more predictable.
I'm really curious as to what others have set for their equipment profiles. Here is my profile from BrewersFriend that I used in my recent batch (tweaked since I use a steam condenser and use the 15gal ss brewtech kettle with trub dam):
BOIL EVAPORATION RATE: 3 qt
GRAIN ABSORPTION: 0.3 qt/lb
HOPS ABSORPTION: 0.15 qt/oz or
KETTLE DEAD SPACE: 1.5 qt
MISC LOSSES: 1 qt
COOLING SHRINKAGE: 4% [Volume lost when cooling wort from boiling]
So still dialing it in, but certainly moving in the right direction! I think I'll crush a touch finer next time to see if i can get the efficiency a little better.