CENTERVILLE, Ohio — A police scanner has joined the television and aquarium as fixtures in Brad Smith's living room, taking a prominent spot on an end table.

        Mr. Smith, 37, bought the scanner after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

        “I do think we'll have more terrorist attacks. And I'll be the first to know where it is. I'll hear it on that scanner before the TV and radio stations come on,” he said.

        Amateur radio operators on Sept. 11 were able to pick up radio transmissions among New York police, fire officials and dispatchers, providing a chilling perspective on the disaster as calls for help were made.

        Now, sales of scanners and shortwave radios have increased. Mr. Smith sees his scanner as a way to get first word of an attack anywhere near his home 10 miles south of Dayton. He said the scanner will enable him to react quickly.

        “I would just like to have a heads-up,” he said.

        Businesses nationwide report an increase in sales since the attacks.

        • Sales of police scanners are up 10 percent at Fort Worth, Texas-based Uniden America Corp., said spokeswoman Jennifer Ainsworth.

        • Radio Shack, also based in Fort Worth, has had increased sales of its communications products, including scanners and radios, said spokeswoman Jill Lain.

        • Dayton-based Hobby Radio Stop, which is among the top 20 independent scanner dealers in the country, said its September scanner sales were nearly 10 percent above the same period in 2000.

        Robert Lyons, president of the Albany, N.Y.-based Scanner World USA, a mail-order business, also has seen an increase.

        “It's enough where we notice it,” he said.
       

Want to be ready
               Norm Schrein, president of the 5,000-member Bearcat Radio Club in Dayton, said the club has been receiving more calls from people nationwide.

        “People are freaking out all over,” Mr. Schrein said. “They want to be prepared in case of any kind of emergency.”

        Some of the calls are from people with new scanners who want to know which frequencies to monitor in their areas. One call was from a woman from a small town in West Virginia.

        “She said we just bought this scanner in order to keep up with all the terrorism and whatever the other possibilities are,” Mr. Schrein said.

        Another call came from a New York City policeman who wanted scanner codes so his wife could monitor events that might affect her husband, Mr. Schrein said.

Price no object
        Mr. Schrein said he went to a trade show in Peoria, Ill., four days after the attack and was all but cleaned out of scanners and frequency magazines.

        “They were buying the scanners and not the cheap ones. The high-end ones that you can listen to military aircraft and all the other wide coverage,” he said.

        “What I see people buying scanners for now is not the typical reason people buy scanners, which is to listen for the cops and the fire trucks,” he said. “They think it's necessary rather than being interesting.”

        Shortwave radios were hot items during the Persian Gulf War, said Larry Van Horn, assistant editor of Monitoring Times magazine.

        The publication is owned by Grove Enterprises Inc., a Brasstown, N.C.-based company that sells shortwave radios, scanners and other communications equipment.

        “After the invasion of Kuwait, you couldn't buy a shortwave radio. Here we go again,” Mr. Van Horn said.

        He said the attraction of shortwave radios — which cost from under $200 to more than $5,000 — is that people can listen to broadcasts from around the world, including communications by the military, airlines and ship captains.

        “There's more intrigue pound for pound in those frequencies than anything else in the radio spectrum,” Mr. Van Horn said. “You never know what you're going to hear on shortwave. It can be exciting if you know what you're listening to.”

        Listeners can also hear broadcasts in foreign nations.

        “You're going to hear things that other people just don't hear. And you're not going to hear it from the American media,” Mr. Van Horn said. “You're going to hear it from the countries themselves — Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq — and get their point of view.”

        Bill Gayton, professor of the psychology department at Southern Maine University, likened some scanner buyers to people who built bomb shelters during the Cold War in the 1950s and '60s.

        “People's lives have really been shaken,” he said. “Security is a very basic human need.”

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