Allright, it is Friday. Time for some entertainment! I was stuck in a dull meeting and ended up scribbling a few illustrations for this thread. Here’s how most people seem to think about it at first:
Same old reference system we grew up in (the antipodeans excepted), so I don’t suppose that is too surprising. The problem is that intuitive understanding of the issue at hand is not obvious and if you try to go the analytical route, you end up with the trigonometrical mess I posted a while ago (and yes, Rainboe, some of us do both the nice piccies and the analytical part behind closed eyelids while holding a nice cuppa – no promise not to spill though!).
If you instead think about the climb case in the aircraft reference frame, like this:
everything becomes much clearer. Suddenly, the lift decrease (and thrust increase) is easy to understand intuitively. Even sorting it out analytically becomes a breeze. The only real problem is that the water will seem likely to spill out of the lake, but that’s a small sacrifice to make on the altar of aerodynamical understanding.
Yes, you can all have my autograph when I become famous for my art!