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Sporty’s PJ2 Radio: Inexpensive VHF

The SP-400 is ably manufactured by Japan Radio, but for the PJ2, Sporty's found a new vendor called Rexon, a Taiwanese company with a modest line of portable radios, including a VHF aviation model. Because Sporty's didn't like the operating logic of Rexon's off-the-shelf RHP-530, despite its $40 lower retail price, it commissioned Rexon to build a clean-sheet design for its new radio, says Sporty's Doug Ranly. "No one knows about it [RHP-530] because it's not very user friendly. That's one reason we didn't want to sell it because of complications in programming and using it," Ranly says.

Paul Bertorelli
Verified
Velcro'd to the window frame, the PJ2 provides good VHF performance in a no-electrical system taildragger. For acceptable performance, it does require an external antenna.

For a couple of hundred bucks, why argue about whether a handheld VHF radio is worth having? Top-of-the-line tablets can cost five times as much and navigate with lan, but no comm. The VHF market isn’t nearly so vibrant as things that run apps, but Sporty’s is out with a new one called the PJ2.

With the exception of accepting the full-sized jacks on a standard aviation headset rather than requiring a cheesy adapter, there’s not much new in the PJ2. But Sporty’s figured it was time for a product refresh, so here we are.

Paul Bertorelli

Paul Bertorelli is Aviation Consumer’s Editor at Large. In addition to his valued contributions to Aviation Consumer, his in-depth video productions on sister publication AVweb cover a wide variety of topics that greatly contribute to safety, operation and aircraft ownership. When Paul isn’t writing or filming, he’s out flying his J3 Cub.