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

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1. - E1A11

Which of the following describes authorization or licensing required when operating an amateur station aboard a U.S.-registered vessel in international waters?

Select	Answer
A	Any FCC-issued amateur license
B	Any amateur license with an FCC Marine or Aircraft endorsement
C	Only General class or higher amateur licenses
D	An unrestricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit

2. - E1B05

What is the National Radio Quiet Zone?

Select	Answer
A	An area in Florida surrounding Cape Canaveral
B	An area in Puerto Rico surrounding the Arecibo Radio Telescope
C	An area in New Mexico surrounding the White Sands Test Area
D	An area surrounding the National Radio Astronomy Observatory

3. - E1C04

What is meant by IARP?

Select	Answer
A	The internal amateur radio practices policy of the FCC
B	A forecast of intermittent aurora radio propagation
C	An international amateur radio permit that allows U.S. amateurs to operate in certain countries of the Americas
D	An indication of increased antenna reflected power

4. - E1D09

Which UHF amateur service bands have frequencies available for a space station?

Select	Answer
A	33 cm and 13 cm
B	70 cm and 33 cm
C	70 cm only
D	70 cm and 13 cm

5. - E1E01

What is the minimum number of qualified VEs required to administer an Element 4 amateur operator license examination?

Select	Answer
A	3
B	4
C	2
D	5

6. - E1F09

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

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

7. - E2A07

Which of the following types of signals can be relayed through a linear transponder?

Select	Answer
A	FM and CW
B	PSK and Packet
C	All of these choices are correct
D	SSB and SSTV

8. - E2B17

What is the approximate bandwidth of a slow-scan TV signal?

Select	Answer
A	600 Hz
B	2 MHz
C	3 kHz
D	6 MHz

9. - E2C09

What type of equipment is commonly used to implement a ham radio mesh network?

Select	Answer
A	A 440 MHz transceiver with a 9600 baud modem
B	A 2 meter VHF transceiver with a 1200 baud modem
C	An optical cable connection between the USB ports of 2 separate computers
D	A standard wireless router running custom software

10. - E2D11

Which of the following data are used by the APRS network to communicate your location?

Select	Answer
A	Polar coordinates
B	Time and frequency
C	Radio direction finding spectrum analysis
D	Latitude and longitude

11. - E2E04

What is indicated when one of the ellipses in an FSK crossed-ellipse display suddenly disappears?

Select	Answer
A	Selective fading has occurred
B	One of the signal filters is saturated
C	The mark and space signal have been inverted
D	The receiver has drifted 5 kHz from the desired receive frequency

12. - E3A01

What is the approximate maximum separation measured along the surface of the Earth between two stations communicating by Moon bounce?

Select	Answer
A	12,000 miles, if the Moon is visible by both stations
B	5000 miles, if the Moon is at perigee
C	500 miles, if the Moon is at perigee
D	2000 miles, if the Moon is at apogee

13. - E3B10

What is the cause of gray-line propagation?

Select	Answer
A	In darkness, solar absorption drops greatly while atmospheric ionization remains steady
B	At twilight and sunrise, D-layer absorption is low while E-layer and F-layer propagation remains high
C	At midday, the Sun super heats the ionosphere causing increased refraction of radio waves
D	At mid-afternoon, the Sun heats the ionosphere decreasing radio wave refraction and the MUF

14. - E3C06

By how much does the VHF/UHF radio horizon distance exceed the geometric horizon?

Select	Answer
A	By approximately four times the distance
B	By approximately 50 percent of the distance
C	By approximately twice the distance
D	By approximately 15 percent of the distance

15. - E4A09

When using a computer's soundcard input to digitize signals, what is the highest frequency signal that can be digitized without aliasing?

Select	Answer
A	The same as the sample rate
B	It depends on how the data is stored internally
C	One-tenth the sample rate
D	One-half the sample rate

16. - E4B05

If a frequency counter with a specified accuracy of +/- 10 ppm reads 146,520,000 Hz, what is the most the actual frequency being measured could differ from the reading?

Select	Answer
A	1465.20 Hz
B	146.52 Hz
C	146.52 kHz
D	10 Hz

17. - E4C07

What does the MDS of a receiver represent?

Select	Answer
A	The minimum discernible signal
B	The multiplex distortion stability
C	The maximum detectable spectrum
D	The meter display sensitivity

18. - E4D13

Which of the following can cause receiver desensitization?

Select	Answer
A	Squelch gain misadjusted
B	Audio bias adjusted too high
C	Audio gain adjusted too low
D	Strong adjacent channel signals

19. - E4E15

Which of the following can cause shielded cables to radiate or receive interference?

Select	Answer
A	Tying all ground connections to a common point resulting in differential mode currents in the shield
B	Use of braided shielding material
C	Common mode currents on the shield and conductors
D	Low inductance ground connections at both ends of the shield

20. - E5A08

What is the phase relationship between the current through and the voltage across a series resonant circuit at resonance?

Select	Answer
A	The voltage and current are 180 degrees out of phase
B	The voltage leads the current by 90 degrees
C	The voltage and current are in phase
D	The current leads the voltage by 90 degrees

21. - E5B11

What is the phase angle between the voltage across and the current through a series RLC circuit if XC is 25 ohms, R is 100 ohms, and XL is 50 ohms?

Select	Answer
A	76 degrees with the voltage leading the current
B	14 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
C	76 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
D	14 degrees with the voltage leading the current

22. - E5C10

When using rectangular coordinates to graph the impedance of a circuit, what does the vertical axis represent?

Select	Answer
A	The difference between the resistive and reactive components
B	Resistive component
C	Reactive component
D	The sum of the reactive and resistive components

23. - E5D13

How much power is consumed in a circuit consisting of a 100 ohm resistor in series with a 100 ohm inductive reactance drawing 1 ampere?

Select	Answer
A	200 Watts
B	100 Watts
C	141.4 Watts
D	70.7 Watts

24. - E6A09

What is a depletion-mode FET?

Select	Answer
A	Any FET for which holes are the majority carriers
B	Any FET without a channel
C	An FET that exhibits a current flow between source and drain when no gate voltage is applied
D	An FET that has no current flow between source and drain when no gate voltage is applied

25. - E6B08

Which of the following describes a type of semiconductor diode?

Select	Answer
A	Thermionic emission diode
B	Electrolytic rectifier
C	Metal-semiconductor junction
D	CMOS-field effect

26. - E6C08

In Figure E6-5, what is the schematic symbol for a NAND gate?

Select	Answer
A	4
B	1
C	2
D	3

27. - E6D02

What is the equivalent circuit of a quartz crystal?

Select	Answer
A	Motional capacitance, motional inductance, loss resistance, and a capacitor representing electrode and stray capacitance all in series
B	Motional capacitance, motional inductance, loss resistance, and a capacitor representing electrode and stray capacitance all in parallel
C	Motional inductance and loss resistance in series, paralleled with motional capacitance and a capacitor representing electrode and stray capacitance
D	Motional capacitance, motional inductance, and loss resistance in series, all in parallel with a shunt capacitor representing electrode and stray capacitance

28. - E6E05

Which of the following noise figure values is typical of a low-noise UHF preamplifier?

Select	Answer
A	2 dB
B	44 dBm
C	-20 dBm
D	-10 dB

29. - E6F11

What is the approximate open-circuit voltage produced by a fully-illuminated silicon photovoltaic cell?

Select	Answer
A	0.1 V
B	0.5 V
C	12 V
D	1.5 V

30. - E7A05

Which of the following is a circuit that continuously alternates between two states without an external clock?

Select	Answer
A	Astable multivibrator
B	T flip-flop
C	Monostable multivibrator
D	J-K flip-flop

31. - E7B08

How can an RF power amplifier be neutralized?

Select	Answer
A	By feeding an in-phase component of the output back to the input
B	By reducing the driving power
C	By feeding a 180-degree out-of-phase portion of the output back to the input
D	By increasing the driving power

32. - E7C03

What advantage does a Pi-L-network have over a regular Pi-network for impedance matching between the final amplifier of a vacuum-tube transmitter and an antenna?

Select	Answer
A	Lower losses
B	Higher efficiency
C	Greater harmonic suppression
D	Greater transformation range

33. - E7D04

Which of the following types of linear voltage regulator usually make the most efficient use of the primary power source?

Select	Answer
A	A shunt regulator
B	A series current source
C	A shunt current source
D	A series regulator

34. - E7E09

What occurs when an excessive amount of signal energy reaches a mixer circuit?

Select	Answer
A	Mixer blanking occurs
B	Spurious mixer products are generated
C	Automatic limiting occurs
D	A beat frequency is generated

35. - E7F11

What sets the minimum detectable signal level for an SDR in the absence of atmospheric or thermal noise?

Select	Answer
A	Sample clock phase noise
B	Missing codes and jitter
C	Reference voltage level and sample width in bits
D	Data storage transfer rate

36. - E7G06

Which of the following is the most appropriate use of an op-amp active filter?

Select	Answer
A	For smoothing power supply output
B	As an audio filter in a receiver
C	As a high-pass filter used to block RFI at the input to receivers
D	As a low-pass filter used between a transmitter and a transmission line

37. - E7H04

How is positive feedback supplied in a Colpitts oscillator?

Select	Answer
A	Through a tapped coil
B	Through link coupling
C	Through a neutralizing capacitor
D	Through a capacitive divider

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 high speed allows digitizing high frequencies
C	Very low power consumption decreases frequency drift
D	Immunity to out of sequence coding reduces spurious responses

39. - E8B08

What describes Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing?

Select	Answer
A	A digital mode for narrow band, slow speed transmissions
B	A frequency modulation technique which uses non-harmonically related frequencies
C	A digital modulation technique using subcarriers at frequencies chosen to avoid intersymbol interference
D	A bandwidth compression technique using Fourier transforms

40. - E8C11

What is the relationship between symbol rate and baud?

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

41. - E8D05

What is the most common method of reducing key clicks?

Select	Answer
A	Reduce keying waveform rise and fall times
B	Increase keying waveform rise and fall times
C	Low-pass filters at the transmitter output
D	High-pass filters at the transmitter output

42. - E9A13

How much gain does an antenna have compared to a 1/2-wavelength dipole when it has 12 dB gain over an isotropic antenna?

Select	Answer
A	12.5 dB
B	6.17 dB
C	9.85 dB
D	14.15 dB

43. - E9B08

How can the approximate beam-width in a given plane of a directional antenna be determined?

Select	Answer
A	Note the two points where the signal strength of the antenna is 3 dB less than maximum and compute the angular difference
B	Measure the ratio of the signal strengths of the radiated power lobes from the front and side of the antenna
C	Draw two imaginary lines through the ends of the elements and measure the angle between the lines
D	Measure the ratio of the signal strengths of the radiated power lobes from the front and rear of the antenna

44. - E9C03

What is the radiation pattern of two 1/4 wavelength vertical antennas spaced a 1/2 wavelength apart and fed in phase?

Select	Answer
A	A Figure-8 broadside to the axis of the array
B	Omni-directional
C	A Figure-8 end-fire along the axis of the array
D	Cardioid

45. - E9D04

Why should an HF mobile antenna loading coil have a high ratio of reactance to resistance?

Select	Answer
A	To maximize losses
B	To minimize the Q
C	To swamp out harmonics
D	To minimize losses

46. - E9E03

What is the name of the matching system that uses a section of transmission line connected in parallel with the feed line at or near the feed point?

Select	Answer
A	The gamma match
B	The delta match
C	The omega match
D	The stub match

47. - E9F05

What is the approximate physical length of a solid polyethylene dielectric coaxial transmission line that is electrically one-quarter wavelength long at 14.1 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	20 meters
B	2.3 meters
C	0.2 meters
D	3.5 meters

48. - E9G03

Which of the following is often determined using a Smith chart?

Select	Answer
A	Trigonometric functions
B	Satellite azimuth and elevation bearings
C	Beam headings and radiation patterns
D	Impedance and SWR values in transmission lines

49. - E9H01

When constructing a Beverage antenna, which of the following factors should be included in the design to achieve good performance at the desired frequency?

Select	Answer
A	It should be configured as a four-sided loop
B	It must be mounted more than 1 wavelength above ground
C	It should be one or more wavelengths long
D	Its overall length must not exceed 1/4 wavelength

50. - E0A11

Which of the following injuries can result from using high-power UHF or microwave transmitters?

Select	Answer
A	Blood clotting from the intense magnetic field
B	Hearing loss caused by high voltage corona discharge
C	Ingestion of ozone gas from the cooling system
D	Localized heating of the body from RF exposure in excess of the MPE limits

Figure E6-5