Ben Wade and the Ionosphere Dragon: Amateur Radio Adventures Book 2 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798251265262)

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!