After taking a close look at the kits I have come to a couple of conclusions as to what I would do if building these kits. The AH-64A has as most glaring faults a poorly executed cockpit and weird looking landing gear. Looking at Eduards' photo etch products, the cockpit can be greatly enhanced, the exterior refined and the weapons tweaked. Anything else in the cockpit can be corrected by basic reconfiguration of existing pieces or some simple scratch/bash building. Although the landing gear could be better represented, those places are largely hidden inside the sponson (the shock strut is incomplete). If you want, that's an easy build. The REAL problem is the gear leg. The knuckle is too close to the body and causes an odd splaying of the gear leg. If the knuckle is moved laterally away from the body @ 1/8", the look improves markedly. The squat of the gear leg closesly matches that of an aircraft at rest on the ground, it is the alignment of the gear leg from knuckle to wheel that needs to be made. Either extend the pin at the knuckle end so that the knuckle is 1/8" away from the body or fill the hole with 1/8" plug and then attach the pin. I don't think Cobra Company can improve the cockpit any more than the available photo etch does and the landing gear fix is so minor it doesn't pay to do it.
The AH-64D has cockpit problems too, but again Eduards' photo etch can go along way to improve the look. Accuracy, is fairly good so it's a close call there against a resin cockpit. The seats in both kits are poor, so that improves the AH-64D cockpit chances and makes available seats to be used in an AH-64A if you want to buy them. The radar dish is crappy, a resin fix for that is a good bet. The sponsons are not representative of the ones on operational aircraft, a fix for that is a must. Then we are back to oddball landing gear again. In this case the engineers of the plastic kit were forced to make a change. The sponson on the left side is higher than the right one and an enclosure for the knuckle mount of the shock strut has to be made. Rather than do that, they redesigned the landing gear into something that looks like crap and prevents the gear leg from being properly angled (shock strut incomplete and improperly angled). But, they enlarged a portion of the gear leg knuckle pin so it sits out 1/8" from the body! Now instead of being splayed outward too much, they sit as though unloaded as the gear would be when the aircraft was in flight, hence that "too tall" look. Another "must fix".
SO, Cobra Company will proceed with fixing the AH-64D and any usable parts that apply to the A can be purchased as desired. Anyone want pipe in with other thoughts?
Chief Snake