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Are you saying 17deg from horizontal? Let's ignore wind and other influences. A normal plane can not climb more steeply than 17deg?

I'm not implying you're wrong, just very surprised to see this low a number. I would have guessed much closer to something like 45deg, maybe even more.

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The Angle of Attack is defined as the angle between relative wind and chord of an airfoil. So if your engine has enough juice to climb at 45° (and many aerobatic aircrafts do), your relative wind is coming at 45° from ground, but almost at 0° with respect to the chord. So your wing is still flying.

Let me know if that makes sense.

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