You can always just check to see if you can book a BF award on CO.com. If the Standard award is available, you should be able to get a mileage upgrade.

I will try that

I believe that the inventory is actually different fare buckets, so this is not a 100% correlation.

Im pretty sure there is a way to find out
I just don't know how to use the KVS tool that well yet

There is a skyteam reward search feature in KVS. I don't know how to use it either, as I don't have it, but others talk about it. Also, I looked through the FAQ at the fare buckets (post 13) and there is no indication that the buckets are actually different, but I still recall anecdotal evidence that reward and upgrade seats are not 1:1.

The Alliance Award search features of KVS are great. I know I could piece together most of it using other, free, programs, but I like how all the information is laid out in KVS. I just wish KVS would find a way to allow LX award search availability (as ANA Tool does not support LX award searches).

KVS shows

CS--J standard
CA--J sleazy pass
YS--Y standard
YA--Y sleazy pass

+ = available
- = not available

Basically, if you're booking on a partner airline, there must be CS+ or YS+ to get the seat you want.

Its the F bucket that shows the upgrade , and KVS does not show it
I just however figured out that the upgrade is available by looking at my booked reservation on CO.com , and clicking on more options
and "upgrade using miles" (which i had never seen) and it shows me the availability for the return.

I wonder if this would work for future reservations :
if i find the standard award available using kvs ,then book the paid ticket , check the upgrade button
and if its not available use the 24 hour refund method

I'll trade. Already since January 1 I've done DCA-ATL-IAH-SAN-IAH-LBB-IAH-ATL-IAH-ORD-IAD-RDU and by the end of next week you can add RDU-IAD-ORD-IAH-ATL-IAD-DEN-GJT-DEN-IAH to all that. And I'll have been on 8 airlines during those three weeks as well...

I hate to say it, but I'm a little jealous. I know there is work at the end of the each of those segments but man that'd be fun.

Your priorities are all skewed. Find a job with no travel and reasonable vacation time, then use your disposable income to travel on the weekends, whilst judiciously using small chunks of vacation time to extend weekends (especially holiday weekends). Also, if the present rate of mistake fare appearances holds, within six to eight months of the new job, your travel should be almost exclusively on mistake fares (or cheap, crazily-routable Q-UPs) in premium cabins. You may not know where your vacations will be until a mistake fare pops up, but you will know that getting there will be quite comfy :D

Well, there's no work at the end of those ATL and IAH segments, since those are taking me to my primary and secondary homes.

I am looking forward to Saturday morning. After two weeks of flying mostly DL and UA, I get a (brief) respite and get to fly mainline CO on IAH-ATL. But then it's back to UA come Monday afternoon.

I do actually get a week home in Houston at the end of the month. I'll actually get to spend 8 consecutive nights in my own bed. I'm not sure when I last was able to do that. It might have happened sometime in 2007, but I'm not totally sure it did.

Actually I have both a job with travel and tons of personal travel. All those ATL segments are to get me there for the weekends to see the BF. And I have a lot of vacation time, which I'm never at home for, plus it's not so hard for me to extend a weekend to Friday or Monday morning without taking vacation time... So I think I've got the best of both worlds.

And I take advantage of those mistake fares. It's the reason I hit London and New Zealand both last year, while sticking to my "don't change continents in Y" rule at the same.

That rule is essential.

Sounds like you are set. Seeing as my work only sent me to LFT twice, I wasn't too keen on the notion of business travel :D