I have been reading about the difficulty of scoring a QF F award ticket from US to AUS and since I'm planning a big trip for April/May of next year, I've decided to "test" the waters and called AAdvantage (few weeks back) to do a booking. At that time I did not have the required miles available (not even close), so all I did was to put the res on hold. I've since lost the res, but what I did find was that I had no problem getting the seats.
Here is what I did:
Each location was for a 7/8 day stay.
Departed on the first Tuesday in April.
Flight 1 - LAX-SYD-AKL (QF F to SYD and J to AKL(no F on that route)) (8 days)
Flight 2 - AKL-SYD (QF J) (8 days)
Flight 3 - SYD-HKG (QF F) (7 days)
Flight 4 - HKG-LAX (CX F)
This is a OW award at 180K miles.
The ONLY date I needed to adjust was the SYD-HKG date by one day. Other than that I had no problem securing all of these flights for the dates I chose. Maybe I was just lucky, but it seemed very easy. I guess travelling solo may also be a factor in securing the F seat, but nevertheless it worked as advertised.
In about 2 weeks I will try again, so I will report. Hopefully it will be just as easy.