I did a bit more of a hunt on the retract story.

Seems a while back that Pete Goldsmith was messing around with his Carrera and found that an aircraft with fixed gear flew FASTER, and rolled better.

He attributed this to to having less upset airflow over the centre section of the wing as the cutouts were now gone.

Seems to me if you wanted the best of both worlds we'd be looking at covers over the retract holes, which is all getting a little bit fiddly for a ship that's gotta work, every time.

but, food for thought, no?