US Amateur Radio - Amateur Extra (Element 4, 2020-2024) Practice Test

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1. - E0A01

What is the primary function of an external earth connection or ground rod?

Select	Answer
A	Lightning protection
B	Reduce RF current flow between pieces of equipment
C	Reduce received noise
D	Reduce RFI to telephones and home entertainment systems

2. - E1A10

If an amateur station is installed aboard a ship or aircraft, what condition must be met before the station is operated?

Select	Answer
A	The amateur station must have a power supply that is completely independent of the main ship or aircraft power supply
B	The amateur station operator must agree not to transmit when the main radio of the ship or aircraft is in use
C	Its operation must be approved by the master of the ship or the pilot in command of the aircraft
D	The amateur operator must have an FCC Marine or Aircraft endorsement on his or her amateur license

3. - E1B07

To what type of regulations does PRB-1 apply?

Select	Answer
A	State and local zoning
B	FAA tower height limits
C	Use of wireless devices in vehicles
D	Homeowners associations

4. - E1C11

Which of the following operating arrangements allows an FCC-licensed U.S. citizen to operate in many European countries, and alien amateurs from many European countries to operate in the U.S.?

Select	Answer
A	ITU reciprocal license
B	CEPT agreement
C	IARP agreement
D	All these choices are correct

5. - E1D09

Which UHF amateur bands have frequencies authorized for space stations?

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

6. - E1E07

What should a VE do if a candidate fails to comply with the examiner's instructions during an amateur operator license examination?

Select	Answer
A	Warn the candidate that continued failure to comply will result in termination of the examination
B	Allow the candidate to complete the examination, but invalidate the results
C	Immediately terminate everyone's examination and close the session
D	Immediately terminate the candidate's examination

7. - E1F04

Which of the following geographic descriptions approximately describes "Line A"?

Select	Answer
A	A line roughly parallel to and south of the border between the U.S. and Canada
B	A line roughly parallel to and west of the U.S. Atlantic coastline
C	A line roughly parallel to and north of the border between the U.S. and Mexico
D	A line roughly parallel to and east of the U.S. Pacific coastline

8. - E2A08

Why should effective radiated power to a satellite that uses a linear transponder be limited?

Select	Answer
A	To avoid interfering with terrestrial QSOs
B	To prevent the satellite from emitting out-of-band signals
C	To avoid reducing the downlink power to all other users
D	To prevent creating errors in the satellite telemetry

9. - E2B06

What is vestigial sideband modulation?

Select	Answer
A	Narrow-band FM modulation achieved by filtering one sideband from the audio before frequency modulating the carrier
B	Spread spectrum modulation achieved by applying FM modulation following single sideband amplitude modulation
C	A type of modulation in which one sideband is inverted
D	Amplitude modulation in which one complete sideband and a portion of the other are transmitted

10. - E2C01

What indicator is required to be used by U.S.-licensed operators when operating a station via remote control and the remote transmitter is located in the U.S.?

Select	Answer
A	/ followed by the ARRL Section of the remote station
B	/R# where # is the district of the remote station
C	/ followed by the USPS two-letter abbreviation for the state in which the remote station is located
D	No additional indicator is required

11. - E2D02

Which of the following is a good technique for making meteor scatter contacts?

Select	Answer
A	15-second timed transmission sequences with stations alternating based on location
B	Use of special digital modes
C	All these choices are correct
D	Short transmissions with rapidly repeated call signs and signal reports

12. - E2E06

What is the most common data rate used for HF packet?

Select	Answer
A	48 baud
B	1200 baud
C	300 baud
D	110 baud

13. - 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	An extreme low-pressure area in the polar regions

14. - E3B12

What is the primary characteristic of chordal hop propagation?

Select	Answer
A	Successive ionospheric refractions without an intermediate reflection from the ground
B	Signals reflected back toward the transmitting station
C	Propagation away from the great circle bearing between stations
D	Propagation across the geomagnetic equator

15. - E3C05

What orientation of Bz (B sub z) increases the likelihood that incoming particles from the sun will cause disturbed conditions?

Select	Answer
A	Northward
B	Eastward
C	Southward
D	Westward

16. - E4A04

How is the compensation of an oscilloscope probe typically adjusted?

Select	Answer
A	A square wave is displayed and the probe is adjusted until the horizontal portions of the displayed wave are as nearly flat as possible
B	A frequency standard is displayed and the probe is adjusted until the deflection time is accurate
C	A DC voltage standard is displayed and the probe is adjusted until the displayed voltage is accurate
D	A high frequency sine wave is displayed and the probe is adjusted for maximum amplitude

17. - E4B01

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

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

18. - E4C06

A CW receiver with the AGC off has an equivalent input noise power density of -174 dBm/Hz. What would be the level of an unmodulated carrier input to this receiver that would yield an audio output SNR of 0 dB in a 400 Hz noise bandwidth?

Select	Answer
A	-148 dBm
B	-164 dBm
C	-174 dBm
D	-155 dBm

19. - E4D03

How can intermodulation interference between two repeaters occur?

Select	Answer
A	When the signals from the transmitters are reflected in phase from airplanes passing overhead
B	When the repeaters are in close proximity and the signals cause feedback in the final amplifier of one or both transmitters
C	When the signals from the transmitters are reflected out of phase from airplanes passing overhead
D	When the repeaters are in close proximity and the signals mix in the final amplifier of one or both transmitters

20. - E4E01

What problem can occur when using an automatic notch filter (ANF) to remove interfering carriers while receiving CW signals?

Select	Answer
A	Removal of the CW signal as well as the interfering carrier
B	Any nearby signal passing through the DSP system will overwhelm the desired signal
C	Received CW signals will appear to be modulated at the DSP clock frequency
D	Ringing in the DSP filter will completely remove the spaces between the CW characters

21. - E5A06

What is the magnitude of the circulating current within the components of a parallel LC circuit at resonance?

Select	Answer
A	It is at a maximum
B	It is at a minimum
C	It equals 2 multiplied by pi, multiplied by frequency, multiplied by inductance
D	It equals 1 divided by the quantity 2 times pi, multiplied by the square root of inductance L multiplied by capacitance C

22. - E5B04

What is the time constant of a circuit having two 220-microfarad capacitors and two 1-megohm resistors, all in parallel?

Select	Answer
A	55 seconds
B	440 seconds
C	220 seconds
D	110 seconds

23. - E5C04

What coordinate system is often used to display the resistive, inductive, and/or capacitive reactance components of impedance?

Select	Answer
A	Maidenhead grid
B	Elliptical coordinates
C	Faraday grid
D	Rectangular coordinates

24. - E5D14

What is reactive power?

Select	Answer
A	Power lost because of capacitor leakage
B	Power consumed in wire resistance in an inductor
C	Power consumed in circuit Q
D	Wattless, nonproductive power

25. - E6A05

How does DC input impedance at the gate of a field-effect transistor compare with the DC input impedance of a bipolar transistor?

Select	Answer
A	They are both high impedance
B	An FET has higher input impedance
C	They are both low impedance
D	An FET has lower input impedance

26. - E6B05

What characteristic of a PIN diode makes it useful as an RF switch?

Select	Answer
A	Ability to dissipate large amounts of power
B	Reverse bias controls its forward voltage drop
C	Low junction capacitance
D	Extremely high reverse breakdown voltage

27. - E6C04

Which of the following is an advantage of BiCMOS logic?

Select	Answer
A	Its simplicity results in much less expensive devices than standard CMOS
B	All these choices are correct
C	It is immune to electrostatic damage
D	It has the high input impedance of CMOS and the low output impedance of bipolar transistors

28. - E6D08

What is one reason for using powdered-iron cores rather than ferrite cores in an inductor?

Select	Answer
A	Powdered-iron cores use smaller diameter wire for the same inductance
B	Powdered-iron cores generally maintain their characteristics at higher currents
C	Powdered-iron cores generally have greater initial permeability
D	Powdered-iron cores generally require fewer turns to produce a given inductance

29. - E6E01

Why is gallium arsenide (GaAs) useful for semiconductor devices operating at UHF and higher frequencies?

Select	Answer
A	Higher electron mobility
B	Higher noise figures
C	Lower junction voltage drop
D	Lower transconductance

30. - E6F02

What happens to the conductivity of a photoconductive material when light shines on it?

Select	Answer
A	It stays the same
B	It increases
C	It decreases
D	It becomes unstable

31. - E7A09

What logical operation is performed by an exclusive NOR gate?

Select	Answer
A	It produces logic 0 at its output if only one input is logic 1
B	It produces logic 1 at its output if only one input is logic 1
C	It produces logic 1 at its output only if all inputs are logic 1
D	It produces logic 0 at its output only if all inputs are logic 0

32. - E7B08

How can an RF power amplifier be neutralized?

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

33. - E7C04

How does an impedance-matching circuit transform a complex impedance to a resistive impedance?

Select	Answer
A	It cancels the reactive part of the impedance and changes the resistive part to a desired value
B	Reactive currents are dissipated in matched resistances
C	It introduces negative resistance to cancel the resistive part of impedance
D	It introduces transconductance to cancel the reactive part of impedance

34. - E7D14

What is the purpose of connecting equal-value resistors across power supply filter capacitors connected in series?

Select	Answer
A	Discharge the capacitors when voltage is removed
B	Provide a minimum load on the supply
C	Equalize the voltage across each capacitor
D	All these choices are correct

35. - E7E06

Why is de-emphasis commonly used in FM communications receivers?

Select	Answer
A	For compatibility with transmitters using phase modulation
B	For higher efficiency
C	To remove third-order distortion products
D	To reduce impulse noise reception

36. - E7F05

How frequently must an analog signal be sampled by an analog-to-digital converter so that the signal can be accurately reproduced?

Select	Answer
A	At four times the rate of the highest frequency component of the signal
B	At the same rate as the highest frequency component of the signal
C	At least half the rate of the highest frequency component of the signal
D	At least twice the rate of the highest frequency component of the signal

37. - E7G11

What absolute voltage gain can be expected from the circuit in Figure E7-3 when R1 is 3300 ohms and RF is 47 kilohms?

Select	Answer
A	7
B	0.07
C	14
D	28

38. - 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 diode-switching matrix synthesizer
B	A phase-locked loop synthesizer
C	A hybrid synthesizer
D	A direct digital synthesizer

39. - 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 abnormal condition where the converter cannot settle on a value to represent the signal
C	An error caused by irregular quantization step size
D	A method of decimation by randomly skipping samples

40. - E8B07

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is a technique used for which type of amateur communication?

Select	Answer
A	EME
B	Extremely low-power contacts
C	High-speed digital modes
D	OFDM signals are not allowed on amateur bands

41. - 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	Baud is only used for RTTY
D	They are the same

42. - E8D07

What is a common cause of overmodulation of AFSK signals?

Select	Answer
A	Excessive transmit audio levels
B	Ground loops
C	Excessive numbers of retries
D	Bit errors in the modem

43. - E9A08

What is antenna bandwidth?

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

44. - E9B11

What is a disadvantage of decreasing the number of wire segments in an antenna model below 10 segments per half-wavelength?

Select	Answer
A	The computed feed point impedance may be incorrect
B	The antenna will become mechanically unstable
C	The resulting design will favor radiation of harmonic energy
D	Ground conductivity will not be accurately modeled

45. - E9C06

What is the effect of adding a terminating resistor to a rhombic antenna?

Select	Answer
A	It changes the radiation pattern from bidirectional to unidirectional
B	It decreases the ground loss
C	It reflects the standing waves on the antenna elements back to the transmitter
D	It changes the radiation pattern from horizontal to vertical polarization

46. - E9D04

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

Select	Answer
A	To swamp out harmonics
B	To lower the radiation angle
C	To minimize the Q
D	To minimize losses

47. - 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 provide DC isolation between the feed line and the antenna
C	To transform the antenna impedance to a higher value
D	To cancel the inductive reactance of the matching network

48. - E9F06

What is the approximate physical length of an air-insulated, parallel conductor transmission line that is electrically 1/2 wavelength long at 14.10 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	8.5 meters
B	7.0 meters
C	13.3 meters
D	10.6 meters

49. - E9G01

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

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

50. - E9H06

What is the triangulation method of direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	The geometric angles of sky waves from the source are used to determine its position
B	Antenna headings from several different receiving locations are used to locate the signal source
C	A fixed receiving station uses three different antennas to plot the location of the signal source
D	A fixed receiving station plots three headings to the signal source