Vince Bobrowski,
Thank goodness, someone else who's not afraid to use their real name on-line!! Anyway, I'm in the process of building the Academy F/A-18C right now. I started by building all of the ordnance first, and, believe it or not, I spent almost a month just on that, building and painting it all. Granted, I didn't get to work on it constantly (more like a few hours a night, a few nights per week), but I started getting bored with building it all. My original plan was build a weapons display for the model (and that's still my plan, so far) when it was finished, kinda like you see in some of the "Walk Around" and "In Action" books. But once I started decaling all of that ordnance, I decided to put it to the side for now, and start on the Hornet itself. I spent over 4 hours decaling just the 4 HARMs, 2 Paveways, and the Harpoon and SLAM!!!
I started the Hornet by going through the instruction book and determining what could be built without paint and building those pieces first (wings, flaps, landing gear, vertical stabilizers, etc.). I then determined what should be painted before assembly, and airbrushed all of those pieces while still on the sprues. Once you clip them off, you can easily touch them up. After you get all of the necessary painting out of the way, the assembly goes very quickly.
The Hornet itself is a HUGE kit. The landing gear, including the wheels and rubber tires, is 71 pieces. Very tedious work, but worth it for the detail. The only details you might want to add is the hydraulic lines to the struts, based on the pictures I have in the aformentioned books.
There are some sink marks on each side of the fuselage, just under the canopy opening, where there wasn't enough plastic in the molds for the cockpit interior side panels. You have to hold the fuselage sides up to a light just right to see them, but they're there. A little putty or superglue, then some sanding, should take care of that easily.
The cockpit has GREAT detail out of the box. Again, based on pictures in the aformentioned books, you can add some hoses and electrical lines if you want, and maybe some photo-etched seatbelts, but it looks great like it is. The painting guide in the instruction book is very accurate, compared to the Hornet "Walk Around" book.
So far, I've only completed the front fuselage portion of the plane (finished it just tonight 12 Oct 2003), and plan on doing a lot more to it in the next two weeks, as I've just started two weeks of VACATION!!!! Maybe I'll have it completely finished in two weeks, but I wouldn't bet on it. I'll keep you informed on the progress on a regular basis. So far, with the exception of the ordnance, it's been an easy build. Good luck on yours!!!