Official San Andreas Fighter Pilots Club!

Okay, I was looking through the Topic Listings and I can't believe that there isn't one of these. So...well I decided to create one!

Oh and before you asked, I PM'd myself and asked for my permission before creating this club (as per forum rules). I waited with baited breath, for my response. Lo and behold, I said yes, so here we are!

Anyway, I am open to suggestions, but for now I would like to keep this as loose-knit as possible. You don't have to make a banner for the club, or officially join or anything. Just post here about yout bombing raids, dogfights with other aircraft, length of time you were able to stay alive, tips and tricks for dogfighting other Hydra's, great locations for your Air-Battles, or whatever!

Enjoy!

i was flying around with my hydra which i spawned through a cheat. i was just firing missiles to high heaven blowing up cars. i was flying pretty low. u dont have to believe me on the next bit but i once got a lucky shot on another aeroplane and he went down.

gazunited, to fly the Hydra, when you first get in, its in helicopter mode. When you get to the desired height, hold up on the right thumbstick untill the camera view backs up away from the plane. I think you will be happy when you test it .

Controls:

L1: Missles
Circle: Warning flares
R1: Aim (When close to a vehicle, hold it down. When the cross-hair is green, it won't guarentee it will hit. When it red, its guided to the object meaning it will hit)

quote gazunited

i was flying around with my hydra which i spawned through a cheat. i was just firing missiles to high heaven blowing up cars. i was flying pretty low. u dont have to believe me on the next bit but i once got a lucky shot on another aeroplane and he went down.

Actually, what inspired this thread, was the fact that I just got 1090% completion in the PC version and I was a little bored, so I decided to take the Hydra from my Ganton Rooftop and start some trouble yesterday. So I got myself a nice, quick 5-Star Wanted Level and started hunting other Hydra's that had scrambled after me, as well as Police helicopters.

I noticed something a lttle messed up, and that was the fact that it was difficult at BEST, to dogfight other Hydra's because they don't appear on your Radar. I was able to pilot well enough to stay alive pretty much as long as I wanted to. I was able to blow up dozens of Police Copters, because they Hover rather than fly. But in that entire time I was NOT able to kill more than 3 Hydra's! Now I am talking about around a full hour and I had MAJOR trouble locking onto the Hydras. Mostly because the sky is HUGE, they fly too fast, and my Hydra flies too fast!!

So it got a little boring, to be quite honest. I mean I can take out Police Choppers with a Rocket Launcher...so big deal!


Well I think I found a solution! But it requires a little dexterity.


What I basically did first was I tried putting the Hydra into "hover mode" by pushing forward on the Right Analog stick. The truth is though that for some reason, Hover Mode REALLY *bleep* with the Hydra. It just doesn't handle like a helicopter.

So....I found another way, a REALLY GREAT way that works even better than I had hoped! Are you ready for this?

Whenever you want to Dogfight some Hydra's just tap R3 and your landing gear will DROP down! Sounds stupid? Yes, but I assure you it works!

Why? Well what I realized was that the reason dogfighting the other Hydras was so damn hard was because my Hydra moves through the sky too damn quick! So getting a locvk is near impossible unless you are VERY lucky! But using the speedometer Mod on the PC version, I saw that having the landing gear down, literally HALVES your speed, and the plane responds a lot better than trying to fly it in Hover mode. This means that the other Hydra's are a LOT easier to get onto your screen, follow, and get a lock on while you blow them out of the water...er I mean sky!

There are some problems with this, I warn you! The first is that it is a LOT harder to fly the plane smoothly; doable but a lot harder. Second is that evading the S.A.M. and Missiles from other Hydra's is a lot more problematic. Again, its doable but harder. (Remember to use your countermeasures a lot in this mode, as faking out the oncoming missiles is NOT easy at the speeds you will be going with the landing gear down).

Well I lost count of how many Hydra's I was able to blow away, it is TRULY a blast!

I am going to make a video soon and post it.

gazunited, that is precisely true. The only reason I posted the Speed from my PC is because this is a way to empirically see that the speed difference is exactly half.

The gameplay on the PC version and the PS2 version is exactly the same, so using the PC version, with the Speedometer mod, was the best way to see precisely what the differences were in velocities with the landing gear both up and down.

quote gazunited

quote MrGTA

gazunited, to fly the Hydra, when you first get in, its in helicopter mode. When you get to the desired height, hold up on the right thumbstick untill the camera view backs up away from the plane. I think you will be happy when you test it .

Controls:

L1: Missles
Circle: Warning flares
R1: Aim (When close to a vehicle, hold it down. When the cross-hair is green, it won't guarentee it will hit. When it red, its guided to the object meaning it will hit)

[/color]thanks mate[color=red] god damn cant work out how to make a message with the color red without it saying color=red

No problem . But the reason its saying color=red because you have the mark up code wrong. It goes as the following:
[color=color code]text[/color]

that does sound like a good air fight

If you run into trouble i away head to SF because of big building(the plane's ALWAYS crash into something)NOTE: you must be good at flying!!