Are we talking like weeks, or is it going to be a month or more that we have to accomplish the goals for the "special" Holodeck rewards?

Depends on long it takes you to lvl, methinks.
Assuming you're talking about the lvl 11, 31 and 51 rewards.

I meant how long are we allowed; I'm assuming getting to VA can still be easily done in 30 days or less; 7 days if you're a maniac about it. I'm just curious how much time we'll be allowed to get it done before the cutoff date for awards.

I would assume that it depends on how long they need to test, which if experience has taught us anything, will be longer than they think and what they think is that they aren't sure.

However, I thought I saw a 3 week geusstimate for f2p to be in test, which seems monumentally optimistic.

Right now leveling is crippled because they no longer give you a free ship upon reaching a new rank.

Three weeks is for when the rewards get awarded on Holodeck after the f2p patch went live.

I think they want to publish at the end of November, which would give us 2 months time, but I really don't know about that. I'm especially concerned with lacking sufficient time to unlock the tier 3 Doff rewards. Leveling to 51 isn't too hard (already at 32 with casual leveling last weekend), but after 51 the next trick is having to level up those skills to tier 3. Apart from diplomacy that seems nearly impossible, considering how little exp we get on those.

I had 1 critical success so far which gave me 600+ exp, but you need 2.5k for rank 1 and like 50k for rank 3. :-s
So far most missions I did award between 5 - 20 exp.

I'd also like to know if we can use copied characters for the special doff assignments?

I hope that we'll get at least a month to test.

I skipped the LCM ship and apart from the last level before making captain it was okay to do. The last level was almost impossible though, I just kept blowing up and it felt like I was fighting at elite level. :-s

Now that I'm flying a defiant it almost seems too easy again, considering I got used to the extreme situation of using a lowbie ship in high encounters. (Flying with mark 2 phaser cannons didn't help much either though.) :p

What's mostly annoying is that it's so hard to get good gear for the ship. I guess I got spoiled with flying around in full rare or very rare gear at the highest mark I could equip. You don't know how much you miss a main with resources until it's not there. :-s

i know i read the post about the rewards but now cant find the thread, Does anyone have the link?

http://startrekonline.com/f2p_blog
Part 2 mentions leveling rewards, part 3 mentions Doff rewards.

It would be a safe bet that you have until F2P goes live to complete the requirements.