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Reviews For: Radio Shack 19-1210

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

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Review Summary For : Radio Shack 19-1210
Reviews: 2MSRP: 40.00
Description:
1990's commercial business band VHF high band 5W two channel mobile radio, commonly used for MURS operations.
Product is not in production
More Info: http://mark-rodgers.com/MURS/191210mobile.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0024
GENERALJOHNNYREB Rating: 2021-02-15
Best mobile MURS Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've got 8 of these little units. I'll have to see if I can get more. I was on a fire/rescue squad and believe it or not, we actually used them in our less used emergency firetruck and ambulance as well as units for our responders who couldn't afford something better. It was perfectly good for simplex radio operations. We had our FCC assigned frequency in channel one and a MURS frequency in channel two. Only one channel could be programmed to custom frequencies like our assigned one. The other channel could only do business frequencies or MURS. We eventually upgraded all of the units and I bought these from the department for MURS. They were not the best, but did the job. Especially when paired with a good 5/8th wave antenna on the rigs. I even put one of these bad boys on a Ringo base antenna with LMR 400 and consistently could talk 15+ miles to all the mobile units and back. Embarrassingly, I even considered putting together a little repeater rig (not MURS, but the department) as we had so many of them for when the big repeater went down. Yes, it's possible, with trash like a Radiotone repeater folks are using on the baofengs and such, along with a tuned duplexer. The more I looked into it though, the more discouraged I was as it would not meet expectations and I'm not sure would have even been legal. Yes, the radios were type certified, but the duplexer and control not so much. I still am unsure, but I am certain it would not have done well. Anyway enough of the theoretical could have/ shouldn't have. The radios are good for what they are. A basic, simplex HT radio in mobile configuration. Be warned, when programming MURS into them, they default to 1 watt, even though the radio can do 5. There is a blue pot inside for adjusting. Hook it up to your meter and set it right at 2 watts and you are good to go. I absolutely LOVED these for MURS as for years there were no other options. I even bought the nasty Dakota Alert HTs and Base stations. The HTs from Dakota Alert were trash, but the Base station was not too bad actually. The only issue with it was it used a bnc for the antenna. Anyway the 19-1210 is probably still my favorite MURS mobile because of its configuration. Luckily we have LOTS of MURS options today. It figures as I finally jumped ship to GMRS and got a repeater setup. I still use MURS some though and....I'm finally going to make the jump to Ham. A buddy gave me a KENWOOD TS-520. I'm going to take my tech right away and then try to get general before they implement the new fees which I hear will happen in April. I always loved playing with radios, I just didn't know any hams and no family or friends wanted to take the test with me.


If you see a 19-1210 in good shape with all it's accessories, they go for about $100 at current. It's still not bad for a mobile MURS radio as HTs are common, but mobiles are not. Who knows, once I'm a ham if I get sick of MURS and cannot repurpose my radios, I may part with mine too.
N2MDV Rating: 2018-10-03
Good MURS starter rig. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
A little history. When the FCC gave us the license-free MURS VHF high band five channels, it wasn't Radio Shack's, or Motorola's, idea. So, those two companies chose to have nothing to do with the news MURS band. Good news for us, but their loss. Radio Shack immediately unloaded these rigs from over $100.00-some to $40.00, and even $20.00 in some stores seen in 2003. Many have seen these rigs as the cheap, affordable, and even legally permissible, way to get on the new VHF CB-like MURS band. This is a permissible rig under Part #90 FCC rules, since this rig is programmed via a DIP switch setting, and not a keypad. RF OUT MAX's out to 5W, and some up to 7W, but there are two POT's inside for adjustments. One POT is for RF OUT, which you can set to legal 2W MURS specs, the other POT is deviation level. My take on these rigs? They are like the more modern version of the Wilson, or Regency, early 1980's business band radios. The pluses are great audio quality, CTCSS programmable, two choices of a mic input, either old style CB-like 4 pin, or the combo 3/32" - 1/8" headset sockets for VOX operation or an HT speaker mic, front firing perky 1 1/2" speaker, super lite in weight, draws only about .25A in receive, and nice bright red LED channel display. The jerks about this rig? Not very sensitive on receive, like .3uV. TX / RX operation goes through a micro processor, thus this give this rig about a .5sec delay in TX and RX. Newbies to this rig will always chop off their first word, until they remember that 1/2 second delay of operation. It works, but you have to remember to get past that. Only two channels can be programmed, and there is no scanning of the two channels. All manual here. Speaking of manual, don't ever loose that manual with the FREQ to DIP switch chart, should you ever want to change FREQ's on your two channels. The final in this rig is the common C1969, should you ever have to change it, other-wise this rig is 95% SMT tech. Can this rig go beyond the 150MHz span? A friend of mine, whom had the service manual about 15 years ago to this rig says, "Yes, but you may have to retune the receive to goto 144MHz, or 160MHz, other-wise it's deaf." One thing that I've noticed about the receive is than I've never experienced desense in the MURS band with this rig, so that's not bad. Still, for what this rig is, or is not, it does make for a great starter rig for the MURS band, or even a good back-up rig. I wouldn't pay more than $50.00 for one tops, even if you do find one new in the box with all accessories. (Just my $0.02 worth.) OH!!!! One more thing, if you should choose your own mic to use on this rig, bear in mind that one of the mic pins has a +5VDC on it for the condenser mic powering.If you use a dynamic mic, put a 1uF CAP before that mic element. I actually wired an Astatic D-104-M6B to one and it sounded super on-air.