I am looking for one 2-way GMRS Radio. Radioshack model 19-903, 5-Watt, 15-Channel.
This radio is over ten years old and is no longer manufactured. Keep in mind that if you do find one, chances are powering it may also be an issue, since it took an 8.4V 1300mAH NiMH rechargeable battery pack designed for this radio and AFAIK those are no longer manufactured either. These battery packs were designed to fit the specific radios they were made for, so the chances of finding a current rechargeable battery pack for it are probably not very good.
Unless you really want to expend the time and expense looking for this specific model, I would personally recommend just purchasing new ones that are more current. Of course, there is a small matter of matching the channels and frequencies, which shouldn’t be an issue, however there are are a couple of things to keep in mind.
The Radio Shack model you are looking for supports 15 GMRS channels (14 GMRS channels and one emergency channel) and 10 weather channels.
Channels 1-7 are listed as interstitial channels and are the shared FRS/GMRS channels on most consumer GMRS radios on the market today. Channels 8-12 are the first five of the 8 GMRS channels (Channels 15-19 on today’s GMRS radios). Then it jumps a channel. Channels 13 and 14 on the Radio Shack model are actually channels 21 and 22 on modern radios. There is one other difference. Channel 0, the emergency channel, is assigned to 462.6750MHz. This is actually Channel 20 on today’s FRS/GMRS radios.
As long as you are aware of the differences in channel assignments, you should be able to operate an existing Radio Shack 19-903 GMRS radio with most, if not all consumer FRS/GMRS radios currently on the market.
I have one available…in working condition.
I can understand chasing down what maybe, to the seeker, a classic example of an era and breed of set irrespective of age, when it comes to a collectable or to fishgut a damaged one to refurbish a much loved set.
But despite being an avid believer in running radios until they are beyond physical repair, there’s very few ‘commercial’ items I’d pursue of that category to do something with beyond dust collecting and being a collectable.
So I guess the sanity of why we’d seek such stuff very much depends on the motivation and even then we can’t always say we see it as sane.
Says the guy who collects any kind of tech reference on the off chance it’ll be needed one day, and spent a good decade or two pursuing a near complete set of RR Merlin and Griffin reference material and service data…