I'm sure that the protracted discussion about winds and leaning is important, and informative, but is it relevent to the original question? But then, on the other hand, I've certainly been guilty of thread drift too!
Fair comment about winds.
But since maximum endurance is obtained at the lowest fuel flow to sustain level flight, I'm truly at a loss to understand how you could argue that a discussion about mixture management to achieve lowest BSFC amounts to thread drift.
