Sign-In
Cart
Ben Wade and the Ionosphere Dragon: Amateur Radio Adventures Book 2
Paperback
Series: Amateur Radio Adventures
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Mar 8 2026
Pages: 148
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.32 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Ben Wade and the Ionospheric Dragon Amateur Radio Adventures - Book Two By Terry W. Platt, NN4Y
To the world, the ionosphere is just a layer of charged particles dancing above the Earth. To Ben Wade-callsign Skip, the last true analog rebel-it's a living battlefield where signals bend, skip, and fight to be heard.
In the wake of his narrow escape from the haunted waterfall in Book One, Ben is pulled back into the shadows when a rogue corporation begins weaponizing the ionosphere itself. Sterling-Heaviside Labs, hidden behind layers of denial and high-tech firewalls, is deploying experimental high-power arrays to manipulate HF propagation on a global scale-turning the sky into a tool for control, surveillance, and chaos. Their goal? A new kind of dominance: command the ionosphere, command the airwaves.
Ben's only weapon is his legendary Phoenix Rig: a beast of glowing vacuum tubes, hand-wound coils, vintage components, and sheer operator cunning. No digital crutches, no AI assistants-just raw RF physics, Morse code under pressure, and the hard-won knowledge of grayline openings, sporadic-E bursts, auroral paths, and solar-flux tricks that real hams live by.
From a remote shack in the Alabama pines to storm-lashed Antarctic relays and high-altitude balloon experiments gone wrong, Ben races to decode the Dragon's signals before they rewrite the rules of radio forever. Along the way, he'll need help from old contacts in the underground ham network-QRP wizards, DXpedition veterans, and a mysterious YL who knows more about ionospheric anomalies than she lets on.
Authentic to the core: Every antenna design, propagation prediction, CW pile-up, and band condition is grounded in real-world amateur radio practice (as of Cycle 25 in 2026). No magic tech-just the thrill of beating the odds with skill, solder, and sky.
Perfect for ham radio operators, shortwave listeners, techno-thriller fans, and anyone who remembers when radio was an adventure, not an app.
If you love the tension of The Hunt for Red October mixed with the technical grit of vintage ham lore, this is your next fix.
Book One: Ben Wade and the Ghost in the Waterfall - Available now. The series continues...
73, Terry - excited for the launch!
Also in
Mystery & Thriller
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
Coffin Road: An Utterly Gripping Crime Thriller from the Author of the China Thrillers
May, Peter
Paperback
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Movie Tie-In Edition): Book 1 of the Millennium Trilogy
Larsson, Stieg
Paperback
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
Big Little Truths: Reese's Book Club: A Novel: The Sequel to Big Little Lies
Moriarty, Liane
Hardcover
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River
Lawhon, Ariel
Hardcover