More mass does not reduce cosine losses, but rather the effect change of cosine losses has on speed.
Since the speed of a kite is a steady equilibrium, any external force acting as drag or thrust is counteracted by an opposite force once the speed is different from the equilibrium speed. This is a reason why simple energy conservation calculations dont work well for AWE. Another reason is simply that for most architectures, (I assume) energy losses to drag are significant.
If we still to an energy calculation if a kite, say a 10 meter wingspan kite looping at 100 m diameter weighing 100 kg, and with a speed at the bottom turn of 30 m/s, the energy at the bittom turn is E=\frac{1}{2} m v^2, 45 kJ. The energy lost going from the botton turn to the top turn is E=m g h, 98 kJ. So for this example the kinetic energy would be completely lost in the loop.
Even so, there would be some kinetic energy left in the kite during the critical «upwards point». Given just a steady state solution, the kite might have stalled, but the dynamic solution could show that the kite pulls through this point fine.
Changing the elevation angle does help a bit. At 30 degrees, the example above would have resulted on the potential energy of 84 kJ, and the speed at the bottom turn would be even larger compared to looping at zero elevation (incidentally there is less cosine loss with a little elevation, at the bottom turn).
The power generation of course will experience huge variations in ouput power as the kite needs to use more power to maintain its own speed, while at the same time not being able to maintain the optimal energy extraction speed.
Now on to variations due to cosine losses: If we are at an elevation angle of 30 degree looping from zero degree elevation to 60 degree, the change in speed will be 1:2. Like before, we look at the kinetic energy at bottom and top turn. The speed at bottom turn is still 30 m/s, the speed at top turn is 15 m/s, looking at the steady state solution. The dynamic solution would show the two speed being closer in value due to momentum punch through. This is what I meant by mass reducing cosine loss variations.
Anyways, energy considerations are in there, but its not enough to draw any conclusions. From my point of view, simulations seem the best tool to analyze the dynamic speed if the kite theough a loop. I’d love if anyone came up with some good rule if thumb for these things.
A bit of trivia: when the kite is travelling at the upwards point, you cannot easily generate a lift force pointing to counteract gravity. If you tried this, you would also be changing the angle of attack of the kite. So aerodynamic forces and momentum punch through is the only way to keep a (non networked) kite moving past this point…
Btw: sorry if all if this doesn’t make sense, It’s not easy to express all of this in a few paragraphs