aye mate, it's a long time since I did my Mountain Leader qualification as well and it was actively discouraged and frowned upon by the assessors then, I also did the Mountain leader instructor/assessors course at PYB three years ago as well as the MLTA navigation instructors workshop and currently run national navigation awards courses.
When teaching navigation I find that people store the Silva 1-2-3 step method easily, bring resection using the compass into the equation and it confuses them totally, that when they come to take bearings in the future they're combining the two skill sets together and the outcome is wrong - keep it simple
As you know, to take a resection using a compass you must be able to see and identify 2 to 3 known points to take a bearing off, if you can do that, you're not lost mate and at ML Assesment level pulling a compass out in broad daylight and doing a resection will attract the wrong kind of attention from the assessor, they will doubt your ability to map read in the first place, compasses will normally only be used in either bad visibility or night navigation to walk on bearing, and that is why night nav is in the syllabus - to prove if the aspirant leader can actually navigate or not.
Out of all the compasses on the market I do prefer Silva and you're right about the 54, it's a great bit of kit
When teaching navigation I find that people store the Silva 1-2-3 step method easily, bring resection using the compass into the equation and it confuses them totally, that when they come to take bearings in the future they're combining the two skill sets together and the outcome is wrong - keep it simple
As you know, to take a resection using a compass you must be able to see and identify 2 to 3 known points to take a bearing off, if you can do that, you're not lost mate and at ML Assesment level pulling a compass out in broad daylight and doing a resection will attract the wrong kind of attention from the assessor, they will doubt your ability to map read in the first place, compasses will normally only be used in either bad visibility or night navigation to walk on bearing, and that is why night nav is in the syllabus - to prove if the aspirant leader can actually navigate or not.
Out of all the compasses on the market I do prefer Silva and you're right about the 54, it's a great bit of kit
