I was taught to make a climbing (10-15AOB) turn after reaching 500' on the upwind leg. If all goes well I'd end up reaching downwind at or nearly at 1000'. T/O flaps would come down once established downwind and turn base when the trailing edge of my wing is about 3 wing chords from the threshold. Full flaps would normally come down just after passing 400' on finals.
Then again it's all pretty leisurely as I have an 11000' runway (RWY21/03 WMKL) to practice on - the traffic's no fun though. There can be 4 a/c holding in the circuit to allow a scheduled arrival to land (normally an a320/a330/b737) plus 2 more aircraft holding in the training areas and 1 more somewhere west of the airfield. Add the controller telling you to maintain the upwind leg for 2 minutes due to traffic - when there are mountains right at the end of RWY03.
