I became interested in amateur radio while in high school. A couple of my teacher’s found out and they quickly ushered me into a secret room just behind the gymnasium. They had a goal of making this the radio room for a school radio club someday, but on first inspection it was loaded from the floor to the ceiling with old WWII surplus gear that had been donated and none of it worked. Among these were several ARC-5 receivers. I befriended one of them and spent a semester bringing it back to life.

After high school I picked up one of my own at a local hamfest and nursed it back to health too. It was a fairly lousy HF receiver and I soon sold it to help offset the cost of a shiny new VHF handheld transceiver. This is why people my age often think young people are dumb asses. Because we were young once and we were dumb asses. To this day I cannot believe I traded a working piece of World War II radio history for a shitty FM handheld. But hey, it was the 1970s and FM repeaters were everywhere. And one of them even had an auto-patch. Sigh.

Wikipedia:

After World War II, surplus HF receivers and transmitters of the AN/ARC-5 family were extensively used in amateur radio stations. According to CQ magazine publisher Wayne Green, they first appeared for public purchase in March 1947, with thousands eventually becoming available, making them “by far the most popular surplus item to appear on the market.” Green’s magazine alone published some 47 articles on converting command sets to amateur use over the following 10 years, reprinting them in a compendium in 1957. Interest has continued into the 21st century.