The US examiner will be looking for the candidate to demonstrate navigation using VORs and DME if fitted. Knowing where he is, intercepting and tracking a radial, that sort of thing. The examiner will be far more interested in navigation using DR and pilotage. The oral will require the candidate to discuss this nav method and his flight plan in detail.
At IR level, if there is a GPS fitted, the candidate will have to demonstrate a GPS approach. Otherwise not.
Back to surface areas and busts. It would be helpful if the edges of busy surface areas were defined not only by surface features, but also by DME arcs/VOR radials. That gives the student everything in theory he needs to avoid them. LHR surface area doesn't appear to have any of these characteristics. So it's hardly surprising people bust the area more than they should. Naturally it's pilot/instructor error, but contributing factors have to be the stupid design. We should be removing contributory factors if at all possible.
All my busy airspace (Class B) busts (one, to my knowledge, and another real close one but I was talking to a Class D tower who warned me) have been level busts. I have always known where I am horizontally because I know where the edges are by looking out of the window/looking at the VOR. I have messed up vertically by not reading the altitudes properly, pilot error. Well, that's the ones I know about
