Descend on the deadside as I approached be at circuit height for the numbers unless someone tells me that is wrong? It should put me well above anyone taking off (though I would have watch out for what was going on).
I was given a h*ll of a telling off for doing that once at an airfield with a fairly long runway on the basis that some high-performance a/c at that field would be at circuit height by that point. Soooo...I started crossing riunways from the deadside nearer to the middle of the downwind leg, same level as any downwind traffic so I can integrate with them.
Now, I've recently had to start flying into a larger GA field with an 1800M runway that demands joins from the deadside overhead the upwind numbers. When I pointed out the potential danger here, I discover that they have a departure procedure where a/c have to maintain not above 500' AGL until beyond the upwind end. IMHO, it would be simpler and easier and make the downwind leg a whole lot shorter and quicker to get inbounds to join downwind from the midpoint. Mind you, they also expect you to take the downwind leg practically into the zone of the next aerodrome to the North, so there's probably no hope.
TheOddOne