Though I don't have a stove thermometer (I have an insert) it sounds like your wood is wet. Do you hear any hissing, or popping, or see steam coming out the ends when you burn? Do your flames go out, and at max air wish you could give it even more? That's a sign, along with low heat, extra wood use, and short burn times. This year has been terrible for drying wood, I bought and stacked seasoned wood July 1st, piled it then, and covered just the very tops of my pile with plastic. That wood that was just under the plastic burns incredible, I can turn my insert down to 50% and on extremely rare occasions even that's too high and I get so much heat and the fire lasts an extremely long time. The rest of my wood I have to burn at either max air, or slightly below max just to keep a flame going and it hisses, it pops, it doesn't produce as much heat, and is over in 4 hours and I reload in 5. Nothing like the dry wood.
To help, I cleared off my open porch and moved a cord of wood there. Now, the sun hits it for a few hours a day, it's in the wind, and completely protected from snow/rain and lasts about a month before I move another cord there. I then made a cabinet that holds my wood inside near my insert, with screens & holes on both sides so air can flow through the wood before I use it. Each side holds 2 days worth (if it were dry wood, it would be more like 3 days). That has helped me get my fires started faster, burn them hotter, and I can usually turn down my air to about 80% now. A lot of work to get a small amount of help, as the wood is still wet but at least now I can burn it and get a fire going. When I started I used to take it from the piles in my yard and try to burn it on an as needed basis. I'd have it on max air and have a heck of a time trying to keep it going. Like Elkimmeg says, I learned when my units gets moving on max air I can't just cut it to 50%, the fire gets starved and dies out. When I want to turn it down, I have to go in steps. I turn it down a little, the fire struggles to stay lit, recovers and then I turn it down a little more, rinse, and repeat. I thought that was just my unit, glad to see I'm not the only one that can't just turn down the air from Max to say 25%. The blue flames in my unit are the secondary flames at the top before my unit gets very hot. Once the fire gets moving, and I've turned the air down, in a matter of time the secondary flames seem to happen much less if at all, and blue flames come off the wood & coals.