fermis
Hasegawa for both!
Revellograms OA-4M is decent too....the only other A-4 I have any experience with was a dreadfully overpriced piece of crap in an Italeri box...leave it alone!!!
Aurora did the A-7D back in 1970 or so, horrible, with poorly done wings and a snout right out of the slop trough. Monogram reboxed it as an A/B and it is little changed in it's latest Revell reissue.
Better than their equivalent Aurora copy F-111A but with raised lines, out of scale weapons and a general soap-sculpture look, it's nothing to write home about.
Hasegawa
These A-7s presently only include the D/E models and the latest issue has parts for both in the same box (if you want to do a USAF ANG LANA bird with the FLIR Pod, get this one).
The Hasegawa is a case of gallon in a pint pot with things like access panels for the avionics bays and pilot steps proving very hard to get closed properly (doors clearly not intended to fit closed, need sanding to fit bay outlines and then tend to flex and sink in because they are too thin to fit on the bay ledges). The wings have their own unique issues, accurately portraying the 'stepped' sectional kink which causes a unique surface camber effect but which means that the wings don't fit well together or at the roots. Added to outer panels and LEF/TEF surfaces that are all intended to fold or droop (because they fit very poorly straight up) and you have a very finicky build.
Panel lines, while generally recessed, are soft and you will spend a lot of time with Dymo and a scriber recoverign them, especially on the wingfolds.
There is no ordnance beyond some bomb racks and Aero-300s.
Thankfully, while this is one of the worst fitting Hasegawa kits I have ever built, it does capture the outline with typical Hasegawa fidelity but price with a couple weapons sets is equal to or greater than the the Hobbyboss.
Hobby Boss
Is the Hasegawa with the Monogram nose and is clearly a pantograph of the Trumpeter 1/32nd kit (see: X-Acto's A-7 'correction set' in 1/32nd to understand how flawed this is). This makes the inlet too broad and too flat in front elevation while the canopy/windscreen are similarly squashed out to make them fit the wider nose. Destroying the look of the SLUF.
Otherwise, it's a Hasegawa with more things under wings and a slightly better assembly sequence. Best or worst of both worlds? Typically the Hobby Boss is only available in the 45-55 dollar and up. While you can find the Hasegawa for 30ish on EBay.
Ignoring the tubby Monogram, HB is the only 1/48th A-7 producer who currently provides A-7A/B and two seat TA-7/A-7K models. Unfortunately, sitting next to a properly built Hasegawa A-7D/E, they still look crude.
ESCI
Also released in D/E variants but not one of their better kits, it looks like an A-7 in general outline but is complicated by a fore:aft fuselage arrangement which doesn't come together very well, raised line details, the standard ESCI 'silver plastic with specked flecks' molding technology and a general lack of fidelity in detail.
Pylons are crude, but do come with a significant load of Mk.82 bombs and tanks.
Though in some ways easier to build without everything hanging than the Hasegawa, this is a disappointing kit overall as almost everything will have to be gutted and replaced, starting with the terrible landinggear bays. Get this one only if you can find it very cheap and have the skills to completely reengrave and detail the kit as almost everything is exceptionally 'simplified' in rendering. You will spend as much in AM as you will for the base Hasegawa kit.
A-4s...
Monogram. Nice kit. Probablly second to the Hasegawa in overall fidelity (inlets are grossly undersize) though it can be a royal pain to build with nuisance gaps in the wingroots and tails and a nearly universal Skyhawk kit problem with building the slats up. It is all raised line which can be hard for younger modelers, espeially around the wings where the vortext generators on the slats and outboard section are quite vulnerable. Comes with a decent range of AGM-45 and Mk.82 + Aero-300 tanks and represents a basic late-E through mid-F model in the single seater and an OA-4M. Used to be common as sand in a desert, increasingly commanding very high prices as the Hasegawa is completely out of proportion, at 40+ bucks for a WWII prop fighter sized kit. Beware, if you are looking for the Hasegawa Blue Angels kit in a cheaper PM rebox, Monogram did both it's own and the import release.
Hobbycraft.
The only manufacturer in 1/48 to include multipe editions for the Israeli -4H/N, Argentine -4B and -4C, Vietnam 4C and Super Fox Aggressor -4F. Not a bad kit in any way though the cockpit isn't up to modern standards. Recessed lines but soft molding, comes with a HUGE bag of secondary ordnance appropriate to type. Inculuding Sidewinders, Rockets, British MK.13/.18 and Mk.82 on two different racks. Like the Monogram, it is increasingly hard to source and very expensive when found. NOT as good as the Hasegawa equivalents so don't pay equivalent prices.
ESCI/AMT-ERTL/Italeri.
Typical for this early 1980s era manufacturer: Kit is molded in very hard, silver, plastic. Looks mirror smooth until you get within a couple of inches of the surface and you see the huge numbers of mold depositions, almost like a pre-vacuum chamber resin kit, which mar the finish. Especially worth noting are the MLG bays with their otherwise fine hydraulic piping that has little bumps and pebble finish effects. Sanding on the Skyhawk is anything but easy with multiple overhangs of intakes and things like the AAR probe all making a decent rub down of the kit rather problematic. Panel lines are recessed on the main fuselage but are broad, soft and don't always meet up, side to side, (varying by release date). Basic kit remains the same, whether issued as an A-4E or A-4M/N or Blue Angels kit so there is no real ability ot model a blown-canopy M or N nor to add the tail pipe extension.
Very Basic cockpit is tiny with a strange, multi-layer, pedestal buildup but missing things like rudder pedals and throttles. All instruments and side consoles are decals which, given the era, almost require a Scalemaster PE bezel and decal replacement to add some three dimensionality.
I do not think Aires seats or Eduard color PE will fit the tub, it is that tiny.
Kit is a VERY tight fit at wings, you must not only trim all mold sprues but sand mating edges where the wing roots fold over the landing gear bays and up against the sides of the fuselage. Result is a near seamless root join but one which is highly fussy and not prone to second guessing under glue.
Conversely, horizontal tails are loose without a lot of delicate fettling around the stepped notch (stabilator trim drive) they fit over. They are pretty much slab surfaced at the leading edge so you need to X-Acto scrape to an airfoil curve and then sand even. Because the tails cannot be reset, I would amost recommend cutting off the tab inserts so that you can fit the tails side to side to match as the plastic is VERY hard.
The LES are a horror to mount up. Too shallow and too short, they will not fit flush against the aft side of the wing cutouts when aligned with the LE, coming up almost a millimeter short in chord and riding low in the 'bays' (A-4 slats are conformal, they don't have cutouts like speed brakes). Further complicating this is the large gap in the wing LE seam where the slats cutouts don't come together well and the inboard leading edge fence which is paper thin and needs replacement. The portside wingtip vortex generators come up short (molding flaw) one unit, right at the point where a raised panel line crosses through it.
Fixing the slats up and rengraving the mutiple access hatches on the upper surface will almost certainly require stripping and replacing the vortext generators (some 24 per side) from the wings and LES. This is something of a shame because the ESCI Skyhawks have joined landing gear doors, making them the easiest of the A-4s to build gear up and for those of us who like the Adversary scheme birds, the slats were almost always pinned up, even on the ground, to lower drag.
The tires are tiny, even for an A-4, and while detail is adequate, the molding quality leaves much to be desired.
Weapons are similar to the Monogram with six Mk.82 on a very vanilla centerline MER (molded attached to the pylon) and LAU-3 rocket cans outboard of 300 gallon wing tanks.
Israeli A-4s in particular used a lot more sophisticated ordnance (Maverick, Hobos, Jammers and later, LGB with the Pave Penny pod) but at least ESCI got the basics of the radar warning antenna and the under-wing 30mm ADEN cannon fairings correct for that version. For the Vietnam birds, the threats up north made mixed loads unlikey as performance was at a premium and it was almost always 'one pass haul a$$!' with often larger (Mk.83) single parent loads rather than mixes of rockets and bombs. The Scooter had the highest loss rate of any jet in theater even so.
You don't get a straight-tip probe in most of the kits and the Humpback versions don't all come with the tail fairing (the wingroot cannon covers for the Mk.12s can be used in a pinch, if you are modeling a U.S. version). There is a large hole in the upper fuselage spine which needs a coverplate if doing an early/Adversary scooter.
Overall detail is very soft in areas like the wingtip strike camera fairing, nav lights and ALE-39 dispenser pedestal on the fuselage. You will need to sand down and drill out the lenses on all of these.
Like the Monogram, this kit has been issued in a lot of base-4E versions, including several Super Fox Adversaries under the later AMT-ERTL label. Be sure and look for these off-brand alternatives while avoiding the Italeri $36.00 rebox. If you are going to pay that kind of price, admittedly with free shipping on Amazon, you should go the full route with Hasegawa.
While the above may sound like an indictment, I am going to go against the standard opinion here in stating that while it is a challenging kit to get right, the ESCI actually represents potentially the best value for money of the available A-4s in 1/48th scale. Provided you have the tools and patience to build it up correctly, nothing is unfixable by a builder with 10 or so box-stock kits under their belt.
There are very few total parts, the engraved fuselage is a kindness compared to the Monogram, the fixed-closed speed brakes (seldom opened on the ground) are a feature not an absence and most will choose to leave be the raised detail on the wings and tails.
The kit and it's derivatives can be found for 10-15 bucks on EBay which, even with high priced shipping at 12-14 dollars, this is less than half the price of the Hasegawa box shaker.
With the Hobbycraft long since gone from the market and especially if you plan on adding a lot of AM parts and obligatory replacement decals anyway, this could be a way to afford the personalization bits without a huge base-price modifier.