Hopefully the accuracy will get better for the Defender

Thanks to 'Anonymous' (I don't think that's their real name) for their tip that the Defender frost fan will be releasing their measurement data in the near future.

That was so interesting that I decided to have another search around the web for a little more info.

There's plenty of advertising blurbs about the machine, but little hard data as such.

Except for a few things...

Now one of the pieces of information that has accompanied the press release for these things has been the statement attributed to Dr John Pearse of the Acoustics Research Group (University of Canterbury) that the blades are the same length as the Amarillo. You can find these statements here and here, amongst other places.

Now this is curious, since we have previously published an estimate of the length of the blade as 6.4m (here and here). Now I know that the Amarillo frost fan has a length of 5.8m. That's a matter of public record. So I presumed that our estimate was out. I mean, I'm sure the University of Canterbury has a tape measure! All we can go on is some photos. The length of the Defender must therefore be 5.8m. Right?

Imagine my surprise to see on this page a length published for the Defender of 6.36m.

So this is the situation;

Either Dr John Pearse meant to say "The blades for the Defender are over half a metre longer than the Amarillo, making them the longest of any blade on a frost fan"

or he was misquoted (you can never trust a journo, even when you release the press release yourself)

or he doesn't know how long an Amarillo frost fan is (even though he tested one)

or part of the process of peer reviewing measurements is to publish a wildly inaccurate figure to see if anyone notices, and if they don't, you know you can say any thing you like

or The University of Canterbury doesn't own a tape measure.

or some other perfectly reasonable explanation that involves a difference of 2 feet in length between an Amarillo and a Defender frost fan.

You be the judge.