# ICOM IC TALK v3.x Virtual Radio’s

Normally only one program can use a com port at a time so if I C Talk is being used to control your radio then other programs can’t communicate with the radio. However there are other programs like A C LOG which would like to send commands to the radio, for example A C LOG can create an electronic log and display DX cluster information, that is a list of stations heard on the bands and if you select one of the entries then it would like to send commands to the radio to go to the frequency and mode being used by the station in the list so that you can check whether you can hear that station and maybe make a contact.

To allow this and similar programs to work I C Talk v3.0 and later allow a second program such as A C Log to connect to something called a virtual com port and IC Talk will relay the commands to the radio from the virtual com port, creating something called a virtual radio.

It’s important to make sure that the program you want to use such as A C Log works correctly when directly connected to the radio via it’s com port before trying to use the program with IC Talk.

This virtual radio uses a pair of virtual com ports. You already have created a pair of virtual com ports which are used by IC Talk. You now need to create an extra pair of virtual com ports and rename them to COM30 and COM31. This can be done by simply running the file setupcom30-31.bat.

If you want to you can check that you have the Virtual com ports set up correctly for the virtual radio by running a program called setup g.exe, which should be fully accessible with both NVDA and Narrator. It’s important to use setup g dot exe and

not setup c dot exe and if necessary change the com port name from probably

CNCA30 and CNCB30 to COM30 and COM31 (Upper case).

You can find the program setup g dot exe by going to c:\Program Files (x86)\com0com.

In the I C Talk config file set the VPORT1 parameter to the second of these port numbers so the parameter would be in this example VPORT1=31.

Now with I C Talk running you can start your second program such as A C LOG and in it’s settings menu change the com port from the radio’s com port to the new virtual com port COM30. The first of the two com ports which have been created. I recommend setting the speed in AC Log to the same as I C Talk or faster.

Now all of the commands coming from the second program (such as A C Log) on comport 30 will be passed to I C Talk via com port 31 and I C Talk will forward these commands to the radio allowing the second program to set things like frequency and mode etc. A s well as allowing A C Log to follow changes to the radio you make with I C Talk or by tuning the radio manually.

Although I C Talk v3.x may work together with other programs it has only been tested with A C Log.