Capt PB
I agree with all you say.
I guess at the heart of several of the posts here (including mine) is that the use of words like “lift” can get quite sloppy, making it quite difficult to know what the user means and therefore opens the possibility of misunderstanding or constructing an argument against what has been said. I think a lot of people just think of it as the upwards force that opposes weight without getting into too much detail about some of the angles involved!
Personally, as I said earlier, I always tell students that the physical force on a wing caused by the pressure difference between top and bottom (alone) can only act at right angles to the chord line (which is a matter of physics/mechanics rather than aerodynamics). As you point out, this then allows for a nice explanation of induced drag, but does ignore all other types of drag which exist and have to be scooped up into another arrow (parallel to the direction of travel) and talked about on the lines of:
“the natural resistance of the air to the passage of the aeroplane that depends for its magnitude on how ‘streamlined’ the aeroplane is” (ie lump the wings non lift dependent drag in with the rest of the airframe drag)
Certainly, if I may presume to but into your conversation with 34DD, I agree that lift as you use the word is less than weight in a descent and a climb. And for my money what she should have said was that the sum of the lift plus the vertical component of drag equals the weight. But that I guess is where we came in – definitions of words used. I suspect in her head 34DD was thinking that the Tiger was not accelerating downwards therefore "lift" had to equal weight. A sound enough "model" for the mechanics eh?
Oh yes, your point about the axes used to define things is of course vital. My recollection is that wind axes are the conventional ones used by the pros when discussing aero stuff. (Since using wind axes means drag will act in opppostion to the dirction of travel of the aircaft your explanation of your coordinates shows you are thinking about wind axes – so that’s neat!) Body axes come in to the act when considering inertia effects and with today’s very high alpha manoeuvring the weirdness of what results from keeping (say) sideslip zero when rolling about the long body axes (inevitable due to inertia effects) is very apparent to the external observer.
Good taking to you.
PS It may have been late for you but its a bit early for me - so sorry if I’ve screwed up somewhere!
JF