On Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:57:01 +0200, BruceGreeff wrote:

Of course - the angle that the flight path can make relative to the
ground is proportional to the excess power available - hence the low
rate of climb behind the cub, versus the extreme angle on a winch.

Aerodynamics guys - Am I confused?

Sounds fair to me except that you omitted two fairly significant forces:
- the weight of the cable
- the tension in the cable.

Both will add to the load carried by the wing. The tension should add a
fairly constant load to the wing once the glider has rotated into full
climb since the throttle setting remains fairly constant[*] from rotation
until the glider is near the top, but the effective cable weight will
increase as more of it is lifted off the ground and then as the whole
cable gets closer to vertical.
[*] this is true on a calm day but is obviously incorrect in the presense
of turbulence or a significant wind gradient.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |