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Fixation (attention)

An attention failure: the pilot locks onto one thing — the shot, the battery figure, a warning — and stops scanning everything else. It feels like concentration.

Fixation is an attention failure where the pilot locks onto one thing — the perfect shot, the battery figure, a single warning — and stops scanning everything else. The treacherous part is that fixation subjectively feels like concentration: you seem to be working with special care.

That is exactly what makes it dangerous: while you stare at the gimbal feed, you miss the approaching helicopter. The countermeasure is a deliberate scan cycle — drone, sky, screen, surroundings — and around again, for the whole flight.

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