Lawyerboy,. .. .If it's A/G, I always just advise them of my intentions, eg "joining downwind", "Five miles to the north with field in sight for straight in approach". If joining straight in I'd always call "Long final" at around 4-5 miles, so that circuit traffic knows what you're doing. And if told something like "numerous aircraft in the circuit, suggest you join overhead", I'd follow that unless I had an extremely good reason not to.. .. .That's for f/w aircraft of course. When helicopter flying, I never will understand why some airfields insist on asking helicopters to do overhead joins and join the circuit. We're in the way, difficult to see, and slow down before landing, which doesn't help anyone. Whereas if we come in low level to a nice quiet corner of the airfield, we're out of the way and bothering no-one.