Hi Alan,
I am with you on your neoclassical approach in general, and with the sentiment that physics is in need of renewal. I find it very interesting that you reproduce the radial dimensional variability of general relativity. The first order variability with gravitational potential that you present for the speed of light forms the basis of the Shapiro experiment. The speed of light in general relativity is only constant far away from a gravitational field.
An added complication in the variability with gravitational potential is that transverse displacement is handled differently from radial displacement. The speed of light is (1+2phi)c radially, but (1+phi)c transversely. This difference in velocity arises from the supposed length contraction due to gravity which only occurs radially, leaving the transverse length unaltered. For example, mass is (1-3phi)m radially, but becomes (1-phi)m transversely.
There is a table of radial and transverse dimensional variability in my essay. I used this table to argue that radial length contraction is a concept not actually required because there is an equivalent neoclassical relativistic formulation of gravitational potential energy. Interpretation as length contraction is part of the formalism of general relativity, but it turns out not to be the only viewpoint.
If I am not over-simplifying, your point that QM ought to be about making solitons out of waves is well taken. In Quantum Theory (1951), Bohm mentions an interesting wave packet that "does not change its shape in time" "because of a peculiarity of the harmonic oscillator wave functions that is not duplicated in any other system." The wave packet does change in time, but it does so periodically,
Bohm goes on to say that "The particular wave packet that we have chosen is unusual, in that it has the same wave function as does the lowest state of the oscillator, except that its center has been displaced ..." These quotes are from Chapt.13 on The Harmonic Oscillator, Sec.15 Wave Packets, p.306-308 in the Dover paperback edition.
So it is possible to have something like a soliton wave packet, but only for the lowest state of a quantum harmonic oscillator. For the cosmological case that I consider, this implies that matter (or at least light) in the form of a wave packet of these solitons would be made from a superposition of waves with energy at the zero-point.
Cheers,
Colin