Anyone up for scale replacement Undercarriages?

[Jay]

Something I've been pondering for some time. The XD Spitfire, 109, 190, Avenger (to name a few) all have the undercarriage legs and gear doors molded in one piece.
Anyone keen for some more accurate legs that are separate. These would completely replace the stock landing gear. Not to sure how easy they are to take out though. Will have to do some homework.

[aae83]

For me, the landing gear are often an issue in this scale: I like to display the models on their gear, but out of the box they typically look like they're sitting on stilts (the P-51s are especially bad). Had thought of making replacement gear to correct the ground stance. Like you say, though: it depends on how easy it is to remove the old gear and insert the new ones. It would be nice if, after replacement, they still were able to retract.

One thought was it might be possible to make "semi-functional" gear that would compress under weight to the right height and, unloaded, extend to the correct length for retraction.

The basic gear geometry is what I find most important, more so than modeling all the struts, hoses, tubing and such, or capturing the exact strut diameter (am personally OK with these being impressively large toys, rather than true models). Adding lots of detail in one area doesn't seem justified unless one also goes to the effort of detailing other parts of the plane, as some very talented (and much admired) individuals have done. Adding a little detail while correcting the stance would be my goal.

Not sure that's what you had in mind, but those are my two cents, and am following your further postings on this topic with interest.