If you never had to go offline for sickness you had it pretty good. not saying that was wrong, but perhaps indicative of the way the lack of a joined up system of air support was a mixture of richer and poorer counties (and some without an asu at all). A post code lottery if you will. I've certainly turned up more than once for a late shift to find an observer sick and then driven to the next nearest unit because their pilot has also reported sick just to keep at least one aircraft in the air. It's just the way it was in the poorer regions.