Made some progress on the Landing gear.

I found a pair of Robart RoboStruts on eBay made for the Top Flite Giant P-51 (ROB675L and R). These have 1/2" shafts and fit my Platt retracts perfectly. This allows me to mount them as per Dave's plan so they are closer to perpendicular to the wing when extended. They are not perfectly scale. but much better than the simple oleo strut I already had.

I had already mounted the straight-strut retracts with a tapered spacer to keep the wheels from retract into the wing too far (crunch!)... and I was also going to have to jigger the door covers. I found a picture that kind of shows this (see the last shot).

It was bugging me too much... so $84 later, here's the result, and I am much happier with this setup (as long as no one is keeping track of cost overruns...)

When I replaced the old struts, I also had to shift the entire assembly about 1/2" closer to center for the wheels to retract into the right place. This required redrilling the mounting holes and gluing in new blind nuts but now the nuts can "snug-up" straight into the mounting wood since the bolts are going straight through less chance of stripping screws.

I included a picture of a terrific plastic model I found online that shows the landing gear well.