Originally Posted by
Lister Noble
my preferred join would be a long downwind,ie straight into the downwind at circuit height from a fair distance out
By all means do this when you are confident that there is no other circuit traffic, or you are confident that you can see and remain well clear of any existing circuit traffic. But please don't do it when you know there is traffic already established in the circuit, especially at a training airfield. It can be at the very least disconcerting for solo students and disruptive to instructors teaching circuits. At worst it is downright dangerous. We get loads of people who seem to think it's fine just to give a call on the radio saying they're inbound, set the QFE and blunder in however they like. We even get people landing opposite direction to the runway in use!
As for high perf a/c reaching 1000ft by the upwind end of the runway, that's only true of airfields with quite long runways, and in any case, if you're taking off in such an aircraft at an A/G or AFIS airfield, you ought to be listening to the radio to find out where any conflicting traffic is, and looking to check that the airspace you're about to occupy is clear.
NS