A couple of clarifications:
First, the hopper is still three times a week, right? So an overnight stop isn't likely.
Second, there are ways to do this on one ticket - with 1-2 night stopovers. It would just need to be in the right fare class, likely a higher one.
When I did the hopper years ago, I wanted to buy in coach and upgrade. But it wasn't available. After research, I saw that it was just one leg that caused the entire flight to be "traif." So I purchased each segment as connections. Cost marginally more. But I was able to do it all in F.