Friendly, welcome.
To start, let's make sure scannists local to you spot your need for help. Go to the
User CP (which is in the blue toolbar under the thread title) and enter your location data (county/state is fine) under
Your Profile and
Edit Your Details.
Allentown and Lehigh Valley are defined in our database, and you can find it here (anything in blue is a link of one kind or another, both here and in the wiki)...
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (PA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference
If you go to the bottom of the page, you will find Allentown's trunk system link. Don't be concerned if you don't understand everything here as yet - floating your mouse over a column title will bring up a small balloon with an explanation - just bookmark it for now. We're going to get you started.
Go to the upper right under the Scanner Master ad, and in the blue toolbar underneath, float your mouse over
Wiki then select
Wiki home When you click on that, you will see a section called
Links for Beginners. In order, I would read the Scanning 101, Scanning Q&A and Trunking Basics articles. There is also an online Glossary - I'd bookmark that for future ref. It contains definitions of most every term you will see on RR.
Further down on the right, in the
Popular Topics area, there's a link called Analog Trunktrackers. Click on that, and it will show numerous models of scanners, most of which can handle the Allentown system (there are a few there that can't - the BC895, PRO-2050, PRO-90...). Happily, these radios are nowhere near as expensive as their digital counterparts, and if all you are interested in is the Lehigh Valley area, they will do nicely. You will need to decide whether you would want to be able to control, log and record using the PC - some scanners can do this, others cannot due to firmware restrictions
That should be enough to get you started...73 (best regards) Mike