Who would have thought....? A Halo 3 Scarab idea that worked

So, near the end of the game you roll up onto an overlooking cliff where you're greeted by two Hornets.  You proceed to grab one, then two Scarabs drop out of the sky, guarded by Banshees in the air and Brutes and Grunts in their vehicles on the ground.

Most times, we grab a Hornet and carefully blast away the vehicles and the armor on the tail (after a LOT of circling around...), then shoot the power core and repeat the process with the other Scarab.  Tonight, I managed to pull off the following:  (it took a few attempts, I assure you!)

Jump into the passenger seat of the Hornet.  Let the AI pilot fly you over one of the Scarabs; it's random which one gets picked.  If you don't get hung up on the Scarab and instead find yourself over the upper structure, jump off and make for the small compartment just below the plasma turret on the top.  If you stay in there, you're pretty well protected from everything--the Brutes won't follow you up there.  If you have grenades or a Brute Shot, blast off the Brutes from the front who will be shooting at the other Hornet .  If you manage to kill or knock them off,  move forward a bit and drop down on one of  the side platforms where the small plasma turrets are, then scoot around to the back and get to the power core compartment.  Believe it or not, you can use an assault rifle to both disrupt the shield there AND wreck the power core.  Once you hear the alarm sounding, jump over the side and hoof it away back towards the cliff.  (there's a vehicle path that leads back up there.)

If you haven't been killed by a Grunt-driven Ghost (yep, it happened...ran over right as I hit the ground!) and you've made it back to the cliff, you've got a very good chance of your tank surviving and being usable.  Using a couple of bits of cover, blast the second Scarab's legs till you see it stagger, then move your tank to the right along the cliff and down.  (you might have to flip it over!)  Blast it again till it staggers a second time;  by this time you should be close enough to where you can hop onto the tail platform and head up.  Run for the power core again, do the same thing you did before then jump off.  After it explodes, you'll get the checkpoint, and the message to join the Arbiter up on the bridge.

Most times, especially on Legendary, I have a pretty good weapon set by the time I arrive at this point in the game--if you do the mission out of order, it defaults to 2 frags, a pistol and an assault rifle and you spend a LOT of time trying to kill the Scarabs with the Hornet--the dratted things can turn faster than you can fly sometimes!   I suspect this might work out pretty well on Co-op, as one player can pilot a Hornet and drop off another Spartan then pick him up again after the first Scarab is dead to repeat the process.  Or, in 4 player, one can stay with the tank on the cliff and blast the tail armor as it pivots around.

Anywho, it did work for me solo, so I imagine you'll probably have better luck pulling it off. 

Good luck!