Is retractable gear potentially stronger / more slippery than fixed gear (on IFR tourers)?

I am not sure what you see here is a difference in strength. The bulkyness of the retractable gears is rather to allow for the extra articulating. Besides, the one fixed gear you have selected is one whose nose wheel will never carry any side loads, as it is free castoring. So the only load it has to carry is the weight straight down, no matter how you taxi. Which is why the oleo piston can be made so thin. Both the retractable nose wheels are steerable (as are all retractable nose wheels to my knowledge), and so they have to be able to stand the sideloads of someone cornering the taxiways at high speed. You should rather compare with FG types with nose wheel steering.
But I agree – I also have not come across any evidence that retractable gears should be less sturdy than fixed ones.

It’s a bar room recommendation that if you find yourself in an upset or an overspeed situation, get the gear out even if you’re well above gear deployment speed or Vne. It’s the strongest thing on an airplane.

…which will end up with ripped off gear doors, which is better. Than ripped off wings…

The Columbia has an especially flimsy landing gear, it has a max landing weight below the max take off weight, which probably means a lot of technically overweight landings…

It’s a bar room recommendation that if you find yourself in an upset or an overspeed situation, get the gear out even if you’re well above gear deployment speed or Vne. It’s the strongest thing on an airplane.

I think my first choice would be my speed brakes, and after that, the gear.

Peter wrote:

There seems to be a significant tradeoff in strength, to get a slippery fixed gear.

You obviously never looked at one close-up. I’d be happy to show you if you like.

At any rate, I don’t know of any fixed gear that have collapsed from normal use. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about retracts …

But back to the original thread: How much is aerodynamic loss from leaving the gear out Vs folding ?

The answer is quite simple: Look at ALL of the light-weight categories World Speed Record holders : EVERY SINGLE ONE IS FG

Pictures at 11 …

Exhibit N 1 :

Exhibit N 2 :

Cobalt wrote:

The Columbia has an especially flimsy landing gear,

BS. I know of no failures to date. Not a single one.