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

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1. - E1A07

Which amateur band requires transmission on specific channels rather than on a range of frequencies?

Select	Answer
A	60 meter band
B	30 meter band
C	12 meter band
D	17 meter band

2. - E1B06

Which of the following additional rules apply if you are installing an amateur station antenna at a site at or near a public use airport?

Select	Answer
A	You must obtain a construction permit from the airport zoning authority
B	You may have to notify the Federal Aviation Administration and register it with the FCC as required by Part 17 of FCC rules
C	You must file an Environmental Impact Statement with the EPA before construction begins
D	No special rules apply if your antenna structure will be less than 300 feet in height

3. - E1C02

What is meant by automatic control of a station?

Select	Answer
A	A station operating with its output power controlled automatically
B	The use of a control link between a control point and a locally controlled station
C	The use of devices and procedures for control so that the control operator does not have to be present at a control point
D	Remotely controlling a station's antenna pattern through a directional control link

4. - E1D08

Which VHF amateur service bands have frequencies available for space stations?

Select	Answer
A	6 meters and 2 meters
B	6 meters, 2 meters, and 1.25 meters
C	2 meters and 1.25 meters
D	2 meters

5. - E1E12

What must the VE team do with the application form if the examinee does not pass the exam?

Select	Answer
A	Destroy the application form
B	Send the application form to the FCC and inform the FCC of the grade
C	Return the application document to the examinee
D	Maintain the application form with the VEC's records

6. - E1F06

Under what circumstances might the FCC issue a Special Temporary Authority (STA) to an amateur station?

Select	Answer
A	To allow regular operation on Land Mobile channels
B	To provide additional spectrum for personal use
C	To provide for experimental amateur communications
D	To provide temporary operation while awaiting normal licensing

7. - E2A09

What do the terms L band and S band specify with regard to satellite communications?

Select	Answer
A	FM and Digital Store-and-Forward systems
B	The 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands
C	The 23 centimeter and 13 centimeter bands
D	Which sideband to use

8. - E2B14

What aspect of an amateur slow-scan television signal encodes the brightness of the picture?

Select	Answer
A	Sync frequency
B	Tone frequency
C	Tone amplitude
D	Sync amplitude

9. - E2C03

From which of the following bands is amateur radio contesting generally excluded?

Select	Answer
A	6 m
B	2 m
C	33 cm
D	30 m

10. - E2D08

What type of packet frame is used to transmit APRS beacon data?

Select	Answer
A	Connect
B	Acknowledgement
C	Disconnect
D	Unnumbered Information

11. - E2E12

Which type of control is used by stations using the Automatic Link Enable (ALE) protocol?

Select	Answer
A	Automatic
B	ALE can use any type of control
C	Local
D	Remote

12. - E3A12

What is the cause of auroral activity?

Select	Answer
A	Meteor showers concentrated in the extreme northern and southern latitudes
B	The interaction in the F2 layer between the solar wind and the Van Allen belt
C	The interaction in the E layer of charged particles from the Sun with the Earth's magnetic field
D	A low sunspot level combined with tropospheric ducting

13. - E3B06

Which of the following amateur bands most frequently provides long-path propagation?

Select	Answer
A	80 meters
B	6 meters
C	10 meters
D	20 meters

14. - E3C08

What does the space weather term G5 mean?

Select	Answer
A	Waning sunspot numbers
B	Very low solar activity
C	An extreme geomagnetic storm
D	Moderate solar wind

15. - E4A12

Which of the following procedures is an important precaution to follow when connecting a spectrum analyzer to a transmitter output?

Select	Answer
A	Attenuate the transmitter output going to the spectrum analyzer
B	Match the antenna to the load
C	Use high quality double shielded coaxial cables to reduce signal losses
D	All of these choices are correct

16. - E4B15

Which of the following can be used as a relative measurement of the Q for a series-tuned circuit?

Select	Answer
A	The frequency shift
B	The resonant frequency of the circuit
C	The bandwidth of the circuit's frequency response
D	The inductance to capacitance ratio

17. - E4C07

What does the MDS of a receiver represent?

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

18. - E4D12

What is the term for the reduction in receiver sensitivity caused by a strong signal near the received frequency?

Select	Answer
A	Squelch gain rollback
B	Desensitization
C	Cross-modulation interference
D	Quieting

19. - E4E07

How can you determine if line noise interference is being generated within your home?

Select	Answer
A	By observing the AC power line voltage with a spectrum analyzer
B	By checking the power line voltage with a time domain reflectometer
C	By observing the AC power line waveform with an oscilloscope
D	By turning off the AC power line main circuit breaker and listening on a battery operated radio

20. - E5A07

What is the magnitude of the current at the input of a parallel RLC circuit at resonance?

Select	Answer
A	Minimum
B	L/R
C	R/L
D	Maximum

21. - E5B02

What is the term for the time it takes for a charged capacitor in an RC circuit to discharge to 36.8% of its initial voltage?

Select	Answer
A	An exponential discharge rate of one
B	One discharge period
C	One time constant
D	A discharge factor of one

22. - E5C09

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

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

23. - E5D09

What happens to reactive power in an AC circuit that has both ideal inductors and ideal capacitors?

Select	Answer
A	It is dissipated as kinetic energy in the circuit
B	It is dissipated as heat in the circuit
C	It is repeatedly exchanged between the associated magnetic and electric fields, but is not dissipated
D	It is dissipated in the formation of inductive and capacitive fields

24. - E6A04

What is the name given to an impurity atom that adds holes to a semiconductor crystal structure?

Select	Answer
A	Acceptor impurity
B	Donor impurity
C	Insulator impurity
D	N-type impurity

25. - E6B03

What special type of diode is capable of both amplification and oscillation?

Select	Answer
A	Zener
B	Point contact
C	Tunnel
D	Junction

26. - E6C12

What is BiCMOS logic?

Select	Answer
A	A logic family based on bismuth CMOS devices
B	A FET logic family based on bimetallic semiconductors
C	A logic device with two CMOS circuits per package
D	An integrated circuit logic family using both bipolar and CMOS transistors

27. - E6D04

Which materials are commonly used as a slug core in a variable inductor?

Select	Answer
A	Teflon and Delrin
B	Polystyrene and polyethylene
C	Ferrite and brass
D	Cobalt and aluminum

28. - E6E11

What is a characteristic of DIP packaging used for integrated circuits?

Select	Answer
A	Package mounts in a direct inverted position
B	Two chips in each package (Dual In Package)
C	Low leakage doubly insulated package
D	A total of two rows of connecting pins placed on opposite sides of the package (Dual In-line Package)

29. - E6F06

Which of these materials is affected the most by photoconductivity?

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

30. - E7A04

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

Select	Answer
A	1
B	8
C	4
D	2

31. - E7B12

What type of amplifier circuit is shown in Figure E7-1?

Select	Answer
A	Common collector
B	Common base
C	Common emitter
D	Emitter follower

32. - E7C02

Which of the following is a property of a T-network with series capacitors and a parallel shunt inductor?

Select	Answer
A	It is a notch filter
B	It is a high-pass filter
C	It is a band-pass filter
D	It is a low-pass filter

33. - E7D08

What type of circuit is shown in Figure E7-3?

Select	Answer
A	Linear voltage regulator
B	Emitter follower
C	Switching voltage regulator
D	Grounded emitter amplifier

34. - E7E12

What is a frequency discriminator stage in a FM receiver?

Select	Answer
A	An automatic band-switching circuit
B	A circuit for filtering two closely adjacent signals
C	A circuit for detecting FM signals
D	An FM generator circuit

35. - E7F06

What is the minimum number of bits required for an analog-to-digital converter to sample a signal with a range of 1 volt at a resolution of 1 millivolt?

Select	Answer
A	10 bits
B	4 bits
C	6 bits
D	8 bits

36. - E7G12

What is an integrated circuit operational amplifier?

Select	Answer
A	A digital audio amplifier whose characteristics are determined by components external to the amplifier
B	A high-gain, direct-coupled differential amplifier with very high input impedance and very low output impedance
C	An amplifier used to increase the average output of frequency modulated amateur signals to the legal limit
D	A RF amplifier used in the UHF and microwave regions

37. - E7H09

What type of frequency synthesizer circuit uses a phase accumulator, lookup table, digital to analog converter, and a low-pass anti-alias filter?

Select	Answer
A	A hybrid synthesizer
B	A direct digital synthesizer
C	A diode-switching matrix synthesizer
D	A phase locked loop synthesizer

38. - E8A04

What is "dither" with respect to analog to digital converters?

Select	Answer
A	A small amount of noise added to the input signal to allow more precise representation of a signal over time
B	An error caused by irregular quantization step size
C	An abnormal condition where the converter cannot settle on a value to represent the signal
D	A method of decimation by randomly skipping samples

39. - E8B11

What is digital time division multiplexing?

Select	Answer
A	Two or more signals are arranged to share discrete time slots of a data transmission
B	Two or more data streams are assigned to discrete sub-carriers on an FM transmitter
C	Two or more signals are quadrature modulated to increase bandwidth efficiency
D	Two or more data streams share the same channel by transmitting time of transmission as the sub-carrier

40. - E8C01

How is Forward Error Correction implemented?

Select	Answer
A	By varying the frequency shift of the transmitted signal according to a predefined algorithm
B	By transmitting a special algorithm to the receiving station along with the data characters
C	By the receiving station repeating each block of three data characters
D	By transmitting extra data that may be used to detect and correct transmission errors

41. - E8D03

How does the spread spectrum technique of frequency hopping work?

Select	Answer
A	If interference is detected by the receiver it will signal the transmitter to wait until the frequency is clear
B	A pseudo-random binary bit stream is used to shift the phase of an RF carrier very rapidly in a particular sequence
C	The frequency of the transmitted signal is changed very rapidly according to a particular sequence also used by the receiving station
D	If interference is detected by the receiver it will signal the transmitter to change frequencies

42. - E9A08

What is meant by antenna bandwidth?

Select	Answer
A	Antenna length divided by the number of elements
B	The angle between the half-power radiation points
C	The angle formed between two imaginary lines drawn through the element ends
D	The frequency range over which an antenna satisfies a performance requirement

43. - E9B14

What type of information can be obtained by submitting the details of a proposed new antenna to a modeling program?

Select	Answer
A	All of these choices are correct
B	Antenna gain
C	Polar plots of the far field elevation and azimuth patterns
D	SWR vs frequency charts

44. - E9C07

What is the approximate feed point impedance at the center of a two-wire folded dipole antenna?

Select	Answer
A	300 ohms
B	50 ohms
C	72 ohms
D	450 ohms

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	An electrically short connection to a metal water pipe
C	An electrically short connection to 3 or 4 interconnected ground rods driven into the Earth
D	A 50 ohm resistor connected to ground

46. - E9E04

What is the purpose of the series capacitor in a gamma-type antenna matching network?

Select	Answer
A	To provide a rejection notch that prevents the radiation of harmonics
B	To transform the antenna impedance to a higher value
C	To cancel the inductive reactance of the matching network
D	To provide DC isolation between the feed line and the antenna

47. - E9F02

Which of the following determines the velocity factor of a transmission line?

Select	Answer
A	Dielectric materials used in the line
B	The line length
C	The termination impedance
D	The center conductor resistivity

48. - E9G06

On the Smith chart shown in Figure E9-3, what is the name for the large outer circle on which the reactance arcs terminate?

Select	Answer
A	Prime axis
B	Reactance axis
C	Impedance axis
D	Polar axis

49. - E9H10

How can the output voltage of a multiple turn receiving loop antenna be increased?

Select	Answer
A	By increasing the number of wire turns in the loop and reducing the area of the loop structure
B	By increasing either the number of wire turns in the loop or the area of the loop structure or both
C	By winding adjacent turns in opposing directions
D	By reducing the permeability of the loop shield

50. - E0A09

Which insulating material commonly used as a thermal conductor for some types of electronic devices is extremely toxic if broken or crushed and the particles are accidentally inhaled?

Select	Answer
A	Mica
B	Zinc oxide
C	Uranium Hexafluoride
D	Beryllium Oxide

Figure E7-1

Figure E7-3

Figure E9-3