I wasn't tracking how you were describing the Bearcat's articulated landing gear, and then I found this on one of the searches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYV2OS2SD0
It shows how complex it is. I would imagine that only the most skillful modellers in the world would be able to make a working model of that gear that he'd comfortably want to fly on an RC plane. There's a locking pin that retracts on the strut that releaseas the main gear strut, and then there's a two-bar, parallelogram link that controls the folding. It's awesome to look at, but really hairy. I suppose its no worse than the 90º turning types like on the AH-1 Skyraiders. The lifting cylinder is small and tucked up near the top. It's a high-powered one since it has limited mechanical advantage to do the lifting.
As soon as I finished writing this reply, I continued searching and found an entry on this site with a custom-made articulated retract set for an Israeli builder. So I guess you can make a scale retracting Bearcat gear. Isn't the Internet GREAT! Here's the link.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_89...tm.htm#9152971