What a fun project! I had no idea the falcon is bringing that much on the secondary market. How much was it new? I remember seeing it in stores, maybe I should've picked one up. I have a lot of the first lego star wars sets. I loved the mini figs when they first came out. I still have one of the first landspeeder sets in the box because I got two of them for christmas that year.
Those lego sites are a fantastic resource. A few years ago I used them to piece back together a few of the sets I had as a kid in the 80's for nostalgic reasons. I couldn't believe they had scans of the instructions from 30 year old sets!
Definitely post pics of the progress!