Thanks for answering my question @Dave_Rome had to skip the part of myself asking the question though, absolutely cannot listen to myself on recordingš
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Taking another stab at correcting topic titles.. Updated this one to fix a typo. Hope I got it right this time.
Listening to the pod on my walk this morning and something about the discussion on pedal kickback caught my attention. The comment was made that as the rear wheel moves through its arc, the chainstays effectively shorten and the chain gets tighter. Wouldnāt the reverse be true, that if the stays are shortening, the chain should get slacker, and any chain tightening would happen as the suspension was extending, not compressing? If thatās the case, the kickback should occur at that time, not during the compression. Either way, it seems that if youāre descending, as long as you havenāt locked the rear brake, any change in āchain lengthā could be accommodated by the RD cage movement, combined with a slight rotation of the freehub. It seems the bigger issue would be kickback while climbing. Iām sure Iām missing somethingā¦
I felt like Dave and Ronan missed an important point when they were discussing why the aero leaderboard never happened - and itās that we are here for entertainment, not for 100% scientifically precise, white-paper-worthy accuracy. Sure, some folks may, or may not, use Ronanās (for the sake of the discussion) aero findings about a particular bike to inform their buying decisionā¦but itās a single data point and the internet is awash with findings, recommendations and assessments that we can all consider.
For Ronan to worry that he canāt provide data that makes a difference is perhaps letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (enough) and ignoring the point that we read and listen for his advice and his views. For his writing. For his opinions. As we do for Daveās views on tools (anyone else ever said āDave Rome made me buy itā? I certainly have) Itās fun and honestly, we know itās not that important. I like to read CyclingNews wind tunnel articles just as much as I like to watch Cade Mediaās cool wall and the gravel tyres testing by Jesse and Trey at the Bicycle Station, and a whole host of others. Are their findings indisputible? No! And thatās part of the fun and inspires conversation (and my returning eyes on their product).
SO, in short, I think itās a shame that a potentially interesting initiative went by the wayside for (maybe?) overthinking it.
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Thanks for the feedback. It is a shame but I think itās also an unfortunate reality. I just donāt think it is responsible to publish aero testing if the test protocols and controls are flawed, thus the results are meaningless, and the output is a random number generator which is, at its very best, specific to the tester. Just one of the problems for me is that every test will have a winner and loser and in publishing results Iāve āindependently verifiedā the winning manufacturers claims, from which many people will inevitably draw conclusions on which bike is fastest and which is a ādogā. Iāve basically just created a new way to have everyone buy more stuff even though a slight error in the testing, controls, ( or day to day fluctuations in the case of the aero leaderboard) could rearrange the order.
Testing is still essential for those seeking max performance, and it 100% can be done right, but publishing the results as ātested - the fastest Xā is either not understanding the challenges or a click grab imo
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I may have stumbled in my words there. Vast majority of full suspension bikes on the market have chain growth (chainstay length increases through travel range). Apologies if I suggested otherwise.
Chain growth unfortunately happens on both top and bottom span of the chain. So itās the top span that causes the stiffening of the suspension, and something the rear derailleur cannot handle. A hub with lower engagement points can help, but only sometimes as itās wholly dependant on where the engagement point sits at the moment.
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Ronan sounded like I felt during the pedal kickback discussion 
I didnāt listen to the episode - Iām a reader, simply canāt listen to podcasts - but why not just publish data with the correct context and transparent limitations. Maybe not with a ranked āleaderboardā at all?
There is some occassional kerfluffle over the community-created Chung gravel tire testing talked about here, but overall I think most have a decent understanding that the tire with the lowest rolling resistance maybe isnāt the best tire for their next race, just one variable in system performance.
I understand if the resources required to do āreasonable qualityā testing at all are just too high. Thatās perfectly plausible given the practices and equipment involved. But itād be unfortunate if the issue is just either upsetting vendors or just a general belief that the EC readership simply canāt grasp context, and will just blindly latch onto any ordinal ranking.
Itās not any of that. Itās that aero testing results are specific to the individual and whatās fast for one rider could be slow for another. So the hang up for me is - whatās the use in my data for others.
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As I said on discord earlier -
Iām not itās impossible, Iām saying:
- its very difficult
- the suggestions that have been made around riding lapped repeats etc will not provide the answer weād all hope they would
- it gets very impractical very quickly, even more so with bikes where the variable we all want to compare is the frame module but so many other variables that are so difficult to control have larger (eg bar and stem sizing, groupsets etc) effects than the differences between frames,
And finally 4) even if I control all that and do the testing - then the results are useless to everyone else. Literally I could test for both of us, control everything perfectly and still get a different order.
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Everyone knows that the Nero showās ādog or fast bike?ā segment is the final word if a bike is good or not, and that Jesse is the only person alive (apart from Adrian Newey) who can see, or sniff, aero! 
ā¦.. Flag comment 
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So if the differences between the latest super bikes is such a small component of the overall equation, why not focus on what are the largest components and how they can most easily / efficiently be improved.