US Amateur Radio - Amateur Extra (Element 4, 2016-2020) Practice Test

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1. - E1A13

Who must be in physical control of the station apparatus of an amateur station aboard any vessel or craft that is documented or registered in the United States?

Select	Answer
A	Only a person with an FCC Marine Radio
B	Any person named in an amateur station license grant or a person holding an unrestricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit
C	Only a person named in an amateur station license grant
D	Any person holding an FCC issued amateur license or who is authorized for alien reciprocal operation

2. - E1B10

What frequencies are authorized to an amateur station operating under RACES rules?

Select	Answer
A	Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) channels
B	Specific local government channels
C	All amateur service frequencies authorized to the control operator
D	Specific segments in the amateur service MF, HF, VHF and UHF bands

3. - E1C10

What types of amateur stations may automatically retransmit the radio signals of other amateur stations?

Select	Answer
A	Only beacon, repeater or space stations
B	Only auxiliary, beacon or space stations
C	Only earth stations, repeater stations or model craft
D	Only auxiliary, repeater or space stations

4. - E1D03

What is a telecommand station in the amateur satellite service?

Select	Answer
A	An amateur station that transmits telemetry consisting of measurements of upper atmosphere
B	An amateur station that transmits communications to initiate, modify or terminate functions of a space station
C	An amateur station located on the Earth's surface for communication with other Earth stations by means of Earth satellites
D	An amateur station located more than 50 km above the Earth's surface

5. - E1E09

What may be the penalty for a VE who fraudulently administers or certifies an examination?

Select	Answer
A	A sentence of up to one year in prison
B	Revocation of the VE's amateur station license grant and the suspension of the VE's amateur operator license grant
C	All of these choices are correct
D	A fine of up to $1000 per occurrence

6. - E1F09

Which of the following conditions apply when transmitting spread spectrum emission?

Select	Answer
A	The transmitting station must be in an area regulated by the FCC or in a country that permits SS emissions
B	A station transmitting SS emission must not cause harmful interference to other stations employing other authorized emissions
C	The transmission must not be used to obscure the meaning of any communication
D	All of these choices are correct

7. - E2A14

What technology is used to track, in real time, balloons carrying amateur radio transmitters?

Select	Answer
A	Radar
B	Bandwidth compressed LORAN
C	APRS
D	Doppler shift of beacon signals

8. - E2B02

How many horizontal lines make up a fast-scan (NTSC) television frame?

Select	Answer
A	1080
B	525
C	30
D	60

9. - E2C05

What is the function of a DX QSL Manager?

Select	Answer
A	To handle the receiving and sending of confirmation cards for a DX station
B	To run a net to allow many stations to contact a rare DX station
C	To allocate frequencies for DXpeditions
D	To relay calls to and from a DX station

10. - E2D05

Which of the following techniques is normally used by low Earth orbiting digital satellites to relay messages around the world?

Select	Answer
A	Multi-satellite relaying
B	Node hopping
C	Store-and-forward
D	Digipeating

11. - E2E01

Which type of modulation is common for data emissions below 30 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	Pulse modulation
B	DTMF tones modulating an FM signal
C	Spread spectrum
D	FSK

12. - E3A14

From the contiguous 48 states, in which approximate direction should an antenna be pointed to take maximum advantage of aurora propagation?

Select	Answer
A	South
B	North
C	West
D	East

13. - E3B09

At what time of year is Sporadic E propagation most likely to occur?

Select	Answer
A	Around the solstices, especially the summer solstice
B	Around the equinoxes, especially the fall equinox
C	Around the solstices, especially the winter solstice
D	Around the equinoxes, especially the spring equinox

14. - E3C15

What might a sudden rise in radio background noise indicate?

Select	Answer
A	Increased transequatorial propagation likely
B	A meteor ping
C	A solar flare has occurred
D	Long-path propagation is occurring

15. - E4A10

Which of the following displays multiple digital signal states simultaneously?

Select	Answer
A	Logic analyzer
B	Network analyzer
C	Modulation monitor
D	Bit error rate tester

16. - E4B01

Which of the following factors most affects the accuracy of a frequency counter?

Select	Answer
A	Input attenuator accuracy
B	Decade divider accuracy
C	Time base accuracy
D	Temperature coefficient of the logic

17. - E4C15

What is usually the primary source of noise that is heard from an HF receiver with an antenna connected?

Select	Answer
A	Receiver front-end noise
B	Detector noise
C	Induction motor noise
D	Atmospheric noise

18. - E4D09

What is the purpose of the preselector in a communications receiver?

Select	Answer
A	To increase rejection of unwanted signals
B	To provide a range of AGC time constants
C	To store often-used frequencies
D	To allow selection of the optimum RF amplifier device

19. - E4E14

What is one type of electrical interference that might be caused by the operation of a nearby personal computer?

Select	Answer
A	The appearance of unstable modulated or unmodulated signals at specific frequencies
B	A clicking noise at intervals of a few seconds
C	A loud AC hum in the audio output of your station receiver
D	A whining type noise that continually pulses off and on

20. - E5A11

What is the half-power bandwidth of a parallel resonant circuit that has a resonant frequency of 7.1 MHz and a Q of 150?

Select	Answer
A	315.6 Hz
B	23.67 kHz
C	157.8 Hz
D	47.3 kHz

21. - E5B06

What is susceptance?

Select	Answer
A	The ratio of magnetic field to electric field
B	The inverse of reactance
C	A measure of the efficiency of a transformer
D	The magnetic impedance of a circuit

22. - E5C04

Which of the following represents a capacitive reactance in polar coordinates?

Select	Answer
A	A positive phase angle
B	A negative real part
C	A positive real part
D	A negative phase angle

23. - E5D10

How can the true power be determined in an AC circuit where the voltage and current are out of phase?

Select	Answer
A	By dividing the reactive power by the power factor
B	By multiplying the apparent power times the power factor
C	By dividing the apparent power by the power factor
D	By multiplying the reactive power times the power factor

24. - E6A03

Why does a PN-junction diode not conduct current when reverse biased?

Select	Answer
A	Excess holes in P-type material combine with the electrons in N-type material, converting the entire diode into an insulator
B	Only P-type semiconductor material can conduct current
C	Holes in P-type material and electrons in the N-type material are separated by the applied voltage, widening the depletion region
D	Only N-type semiconductor material can conduct current

25. - E6B01

What is the most useful characteristic of a Zener diode?

Select	Answer
A	A constant voltage drop under conditions of varying current
B	An internal capacitance that varies with the applied voltage
C	A negative resistance region
D	A constant current drop under conditions of varying voltage

26. - E6C09

What is a Programmable Logic Device (PLD)?

Select	Answer
A	An algorithm for simulating logic functions during circuit design
B	A device to control industrial equipment
C	Programmable equipment used for testing digital logic integrated circuits
D	A programmable collection of logic gates and circuits in a single integrated circuit

27. - E6D12

What is the definition of saturation in a ferrite core inductor?

Select	Answer
A	The inductor windings are over coupled
B	Adjacent inductors become over-coupled
C	The inductor's voltage rating is exceeded causing a flashover
D	The ability of the inductor's core to store magnetic energy has been exceeded

28. - E6E07

Which of the following is typically used to construct a MMIC-based microwave amplifier?

Select	Answer
A	Wave-soldering construction
B	Point-to-point construction
C	Microstrip construction
D	Ground-plane construction

29. - E6F06

Which of these materials is affected the most by photoconductivity?

Select	Answer
A	A crystalline semiconductor
B	An ordinary metal
C	A heavy metal
D	A liquid semiconductor

30. - E7A04

How many flip-flops are required to divide a signal frequency by 4?

Select	Answer
A	1
B	8
C	2
D	4

31. - E7B04

Where on the load line of a Class A common emitter amplifier would bias normally be set?

Select	Answer
A	At a point where the bias resistor equals the load resistor
B	Where the load line intersects the voltage axis
C	Approximately half-way between saturation and cutoff
D	At a point where the load line intersects the zero bias current curve

32. - E7C15

What is a crystal lattice filter?

Select	Answer
A	A filter with wide bandwidth and shallow skirts made using quartz crystals
B	An audio filter made with four quartz crystals that resonate at 1kHz intervals
C	A filter with narrow bandwidth and steep skirts made using quartz crystals
D	A power supply filter made with interlaced quartz crystals

33. - E7D13

What is the equation for calculating power dissipation by a series connected linear voltage regulator?

Select	Answer
A	Input voltage divided by output current
B	Voltage difference from input to output multiplied by output current
C	Input voltage multiplied by input current
D	Output voltage multiplied by output current

34. - E7E04

What is one way a single-sideband phone signal can be generated?

Select	Answer
A	By using a balanced modulator followed by a filter
B	By using a reactance modulator followed by a mixer
C	By driving a product detector with a DSB signal
D	By using a loop modulator followed by a mixer

35. - E7F03

What type of digital signal processing filter is used to generate an SSB signal?

Select	Answer
A	An elliptical filter
B	A Hilbert-transform filter
C	An adaptive filter
D	A notch filter

36. - E7G02

What is the effect of ringing in a filter?

Select	Answer
A	An echo caused by a long time delay
B	A reduction in high frequency response
C	Undesired oscillations added to the desired signal
D	Partial cancellation of the signal over a range of frequencies

37. - E7H02

Which describes a microphonic?

Select	Answer
A	An IC used for amplifying microphone signals
B	Excess loading of the microphone by an oscillator
C	Changes in oscillator frequency due to mechanical vibration
D	Distortion caused by RF pickup on the microphone cable

38. - E8A08

Why would a direct or flash conversion analog-to-digital converter be useful for a software defined radio?

Select	Answer
A	All of these choices are correct
B	Very low power consumption decreases frequency drift
C	Very high speed allows digitizing high frequencies
D	Immunity to out of sequence coding reduces spurious responses

39. - E8B01

What is the term for the ratio between the frequency deviation of an RF carrier wave and the modulating frequency of its corresponding FM-phone signal?

Select	Answer
A	Quieting index
B	Percentage of modulation
C	Modulation index
D	FM compressibility

40. - E8C11

What is the relationship between symbol rate and baud?

Select	Answer
A	Baud is twice the symbol rate
B	Symbol rate is only used for packet-based modes
C	They are the same
D	Baud is only used for RTTY

41. - E8D10

What are some of the differences between the Baudot digital code and ASCII?

Select	Answer
A	Baudot uses 5 data bits per character, ASCII uses 7 or 8; Baudot uses 2 characters as letters/figures shift codes, ASCII has no letters/figures shift code
B	Baudot uses 7 data bits per character, ASCII uses 8; Baudot has no letters/figures shift code, ASCII uses 2 letters/figures shift codes
C	Baudot uses 6 data bits per character, ASCII uses 7 or 8; Baudot has no letters/figures shift code, ASCII uses 2 letters/figures shift codes
D	Baudot uses 4 data bits per character, ASCII uses 7 or 8; Baudot uses 1 character as a letters/figures shift code, ASCII has no letters/figures code

42. - E9A14

What is meant by the radiation resistance of an antenna?

Select	Answer
A	The combined losses of the antenna elements and feed line
B	The specific impedance of the antenna
C	The resistance in the atmosphere that an antenna must overcome to be able to radiate a signal
D	The value of a resistance that would dissipate the same amount of power as that radiated from an antenna

43. - E9B16

How many elevation lobes appear in the forward direction of the antenna radiation pattern shown in Figure E9-2?

Select	Answer
A	3
B	1
C	4
D	7

44. - E9C10

Which of the following describes a Zepp antenna?

Select	Answer
A	An omni-directional antenna commonly used for satellite communications
B	An end fed dipole antenna
C	A vertical array capable of quickly changing the direction of maximum radiation by changing phasing lines
D	A dipole constructed from zip cord

45. - E9D12

Which of the following would provide the best RF ground for your station?

Select	Answer
A	An electrically short connection to 3 or 4 interconnected ground rods via a series RF choke
B	A 50 ohm resistor connected to ground
C	An electrically short connection to a metal water pipe
D	An electrically short connection to 3 or 4 interconnected ground rods driven into the Earth

46. - E9E05

How must the driven element in a 3-element Yagi be tuned to use a hairpin matching system?

Select	Answer
A	The driven element radiation resistance must be higher than the characteristic impedance of the transmission line
B	The driven element reactance must be capacitive
C	The driven element resonance must be lower than the operating frequency
D	The driven element reactance must be inductive

47. - E9F04

What is the typical velocity factor for a coaxial cable with solid polyethylene dielectric?

Select	Answer
A	2.70
B	0.10
C	0.30
D	0.66

48. - E9G01

Which of the following can be calculated using a Smith chart?

Select	Answer
A	Antenna radiation pattern
B	Radiation resistance
C	Radio propagation
D	Impedance along transmission lines

49. - E9H07

Why is it advisable to use an RF attenuator on a receiver being used for direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	It narrows the bandwidth of the received signal to improve signal to noise ratio
B	It reduces loss of received signals caused by antenna pattern nulls, thereby increasing sensitivity
C	It compensates for the effects of an isotropic antenna, thereby improving directivity
D	It prevents receiver overload which could make it difficult to determine peaks or nulls

50. - E0A04

When evaluating a site with multiple transmitters operating at the same time, the operators and licensees of which transmitters are responsible for mitigating over-exposure situations?

Select	Answer
A	Each transmitter operating with a duty-cycle greater than 50 percent
B	Each transmitter that produces 5 percent or more of its MPE limit at accessible locations
C	Only commercial transmitters
D	Only the most powerful transmitter

Figure E9-2