would ya look at that? another crappy plane!

Controls real quick.

For VTOL takeoff:

-Select VTOL action group

-Set slider 1 to a number between 80-90

-turn on your brakes (for my mobile players, suck it up and move on)

-SLOWLY throttle up to around 50%

-Use your pilot instincts to get decently off the ground and slowly transition to Slider 1 to about 70~

-Turn on slowed time warp/pause, set slider back to 0, then turn off VTOL mode and fly away

DO NOT TURN ON AFTERBURNER ACTIVATION GROUP IN VTOL MODE. DO NOT ACTIVATE THE ENGINE IN STAGING OR YOU MIGHT JUST DIE

Anyway, to the lore bits

In the early 1970's before the fall of the Etranian Empire, a contest was made to help the country develop it's first VTOL naval fighter for it's vastly growing naval fleet. two companies made it to the final round, Augur Aerospace, and Voldren Technical Solutions.

The legacy Augur builders had built every single major military fighter aircraft since the start of the Jet Era, from the Swing-Wing naval AT-47, to the light fighter AUG-11. for the contest, they designed a delta-wing/canard VTOL plane that could be launched from Etranian Carriers. It was called the AUG-19

The Voldren builders had only made small experimental aircraft for the Air Force, and had yet to build anything for the Navy. Their main area of expertiese comes from small private civilian aircraft. They built the VTOL VOL-18 aircraft that would later evolve into the one you see on your screen now.

Competition was fierce, lobbying was incredibly rampant throughout the choice fase. Even Prime Minister Kuiper was being pulled one way or another for the choice.

Eventually, the older and richer Augur Aerospace won the contract and started to produce the AUG-19 for the navy, which reached pretty decent sales abroad. about 200 were produced before the fall of the Etranian Empire, and more are believed to be in production now thrugh the two waring groups.

Voldren Technical Solutions went totally bankrupt after losing the contract. It was eventually able to recover, but never to it's original status. After the civil war in Etrania started, the company started desparately looking for a way out of the conflict. Eventually, the Obsidian Owned company, Sloan Ballistics bought the small company and took it's operations into Obsido.

Sloan Ballistics

Since Sloan Ballistics did not have a dedicated Aerospace Firm, so Voldren was rebraded as such. They started to produce aircraft under the Sloan name. a prototype VOL-18 survived the war, and after being shipped to Obsido, The new reformed Sloan Aerospace Division started to finalize it's design into an incredibly capable commercial Naval Fighter.

The SLO-183 was the new name. the plane reached MASSIVE sales abroad and because of the Aerospace Firm's new name and publicity, it was able to TRIPLE the amount of money Sloan Ballistics had on hand in just a few months.

With the SLO-183 sales and other aircraft aswell, Sloan Ballistics became the first company to posess 1,000,000 bits. this is more money then many countries have even today.

The SLO-183 is still to this day, one of the most sucsessful commercial fighter aircraft in the world.