Thank you
Much thanks to all the posters above. I arrived yesterday without a problem. EK F remains by far the best way to get between HKG and DXB, IMO. Highly appreciative of the help.
Fwiw, I was told at the airport check-in counter close time is indeed 60 minutes. I arrived about 70+ minutes before (~6:25am) and checked-in without incident. And I was also told in-town checkin was not available, as confirmed by all the posters above.
It was the first time I took the morning flight and found it a fantastic way to steal an extra few hours in the day versus the evening overnights, both on EK and CX, which I've done each time until now. And the WiFi worked far better than I'm normally familiar with EK, perhaps due to the fact our flight was half-full.
I didn't realize equipment swaps were a "thing" on EK, you folks had me worried. CX, the airline I'm far more familiar with, essentially differentiates between regional (~4 hours and less) and everything else. The "everything else" category you can take it to the bank what your hard product will be. But CX regional is downright maddening due to endless equipment swaps between regional and long-haul planes, whose hard product has a huge gulf in quality.