Thanks Spaz for that research. Answered all my mode questions. Seems pretty automatic, you just point at the pointy end of the ship, throttle up and away she goes..... Still seems the ramp has the advantage of putting the aircraft on the correct trajectory towards purely wingborne flight.
Always a positive making the aircraft easier and intuitive to fly, but the down side seems to put so much on the flight control software and mode. More than one case of the plane (or the pilot) thinking they are in a certain mode, but they are not, or a simple sensor fault leading to erroneous inputs (like the water in the B-2 airspeed indicator on Guam). It's all great until the computer thinks otherwise...