Ex 380 and Stig,
As ex-380 said, the important part, as far as we are concerned, is that you say so early enough that we can adjust the spacing accordingly. Before base leg is sufficient, downwind would be better. In any case, PLEASE make it before we have turned the following traffic in behind you - NOT when established at 10DME.
As for the 10k 125 miles out - I take it you are basing that on flying the WHOLE star? The message hasn't got through to many (including our management, going by recent internal emails) that the idea of the "trombones" is to allow a means of absorbing the extra traffic in case of go-arounds / cocked up inbound spacing, etc. It is NOT intended to be continually filled up to the brim with traffic, which would not only leave nothing to absorb the overspill but very few options with regard to vectoring, etc as there is now very little "empty" airspace. The idea is to have a base turn in the 10-15 mile range with enough traffic to keep that continuous. That means the full STAR length is some 40 mile or so MORE than you could normally expect to fly. Whilst I do understand that this still means you descend to 10k earlier than you would like, there are also a host of airspace restrictions and other reasons for doing so.