It seems the consensus of opinon is to check Pooleys beforehand for joining instructions, keep your eyes open and adapt your join to the circuit as you find it. Good advice. Sadly, often the one thing people fail to do
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IMHO the average GA airfield has a relatively short, say 800m, runway and that would suggest to me that crossing the upwind numbers at circuit height is a sensible plan in the absence of contrary instructions.
Where you have longer runways - say the 1800m referred to above - crossing the upwind numbers seems problematic and crossing somewhere between mid-point and the upwind end might be a good idea! In any event, I would have thought that airfields with runways of that size are likely to be bigger GA or Commercial hubs which have ATC and specific joining instructions.
Anyway, thanks for all the thoughts Ladies and Gentlemen.
