We used to burn off the packs first thing too, but the practice stopped, thankfully, before I joined our 146 fleet.
The only answer to these aircraft is to breed first officers with eyes in the top of their heads. The automatic cabin temp is crap, the manual control marginal and and any large power setting change requires a good look up and tweek on a lot of the older hulls.
Basically, the pack valves are ****e, they fill with crap, are notoriously difficult to respond to small signals from the automatic settings and are also a bitch to get out and clean up for engineers.
If you let the duct temps rise, you will get nasty smells. Simple. Unfortunately, in a two crew aircraft, you can't always keep looking and sometimes it's the smell that alerts you to look up and tend to the temps.
I hope the Q400 is better in this respect!
