I remember visiting an air museum in phoenix (maybe Tucson but def AZ) with Ivan Munninghoff -was there for a jet meet and had the weird rainstorm. - they had a mig which had a similar strut to compress the gear during retraction, he passed the "rope" and was climbing into the wheel well to better understand the geometry. the 22 looks like it may have borrowed a bit from the mig 21, sounds like that part carried over as well.