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

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1. - E0A02

When evaluating RF exposure levels from your station at a neighbor's home, what must you do?

Select	Answer
A	Ensure signals from your station are less than the uncontrolled Maximum Permitted Exposure (MPE) limits
B	Ensure signals from your station are less than the controlled Maximum Permitted Emission (MPE) limits
C	Ensure signals from your station are less than the controlled Maximum Permitted Exposure (MPE) limits
D	Ensure signals from your station are less than the uncontrolled Maximum Permitted Emission (MPE) limits

2. - E1A08

If a station in a message forwarding system inadvertently forwards a message that is in violation of FCC rules, who is primarily accountable for the rules violation?

Select	Answer
A	The control operators of all the stations in the system
B	The control operator of the packet bulletin board station
C	The control operator of the originating station
D	The control operators of all the stations in the system not authenticating the source from which they accept communications

3. - E1B11

What does PRB-1 require of regulations affecting amateur radio?

Select	Answer
A	Reasonable accommodations of amateur radio must be made
B	Amateur radio operations must be permitted in any private residence
C	No limitations may be placed on antenna size or placement
D	Use of wireless devices in a vehicle is exempt from regulation

4. - E1C03

How do the control operator responsibilities of a station under automatic control differ from one under local control?

Select	Answer
A	Under local control there is no control operator
B	Under automatic control there is no control operator
C	Under local control a control operator is not required to be present at a control point
D	Under automatic control the control operator is not required to be present at the control point

5. - E1D04

Which of the following is required in the identification transmissions from a balloon-borne telemetry station?

Select	Answer
A	All these choices are correct
B	The station's six-character Maidenhead grid locator
C	The output power of the balloon transmitter
D	Call sign

6. - E1E06

Who is responsible for the proper conduct and necessary supervision during an amateur operator license examination session?

Select	Answer
A	The FCC
B	The VE session manager
C	Each administering VE
D	The VEC coordinating the session

7. - E1F04

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

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

8. - E2A05

What do the letters in a satellite's mode designator specify?

Select	Answer
A	The location of the ground control station
B	The uplink and downlink frequency ranges
C	The polarization of uplink and downlink signals
D	Power limits for uplink and downlink transmissions

9. - E2B03

How is an interlaced scanning pattern generated in a fast-scan (NTSC) television system?

Select	Answer
A	By scanning two fields simultaneously
B	By scanning each field from bottom to top
C	By scanning odd numbered lines in one field and even numbered lines in the next
D	By scanning lines from left to right in one field and right to left in the next

10. - E2C05

What is the function of a DX QSL Manager?

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

11. - E2D04

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

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

12. - E2E08

Which of the following HF digital modes can be used to transfer binary files?

Select	Answer
A	RTTY
B	PACTOR
C	Hellschreiber
D	AMTOR

13. - E3A13

Which of these emission modes is best for auroral propagation?

Select	Answer
A	CW
B	RTTY
C	FM
D	SSB

14. - E3B12

What is the primary characteristic of chordal hop propagation?

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

15. - E3C09

How does the intensity of an X3 flare compare to that of an X2 flare?

Select	Answer
A	50 percent greater
B	Twice as great
C	Four times as great
D	10 percent greater

16. - E4A11

How should an antenna analyzer be connected when measuring antenna resonance and feed point impedance?

Select	Answer
A	Connect the antenna feed line directly to the analyzer's connector
B	Loosely couple the analyzer near the antenna base
C	Loosely couple the antenna and a dummy load to the analyzer
D	Connect the analyzer via a high-impedance transformer to the antenna

17. - E4B02

What is the significance of voltmeter sensitivity expressed in ohms per volt?

Select	Answer
A	When used as a galvanometer, the reading in volts multiplied by the ohms per volt rating will determine the power drawn by the device under test
B	When used as an ammeter, the full scale reading in amps divided by ohms per volt rating will determine the size of shunt needed
C	The full scale reading of the voltmeter multiplied by its ohms per volt rating will indicate the input impedance of the voltmeter
D	When used as an ohmmeter, the reading in ohms divided by the ohms per volt rating will determine the voltage applied to the circuit

18. - E4C10

What is an advantage of having a variety of receiver IF bandwidths from which to select?

Select	Answer
A	The noise figure of the RF amplifier can be adjusted to match the modulation type, thus increasing receiver sensitivity
B	Receiver power consumption can be reduced when wider bandwidth is not required
C	Multiple frequencies can be received simultaneously if desired
D	Receive bandwidth can be set to match the modulation bandwidth, maximizing signal-to-noise ratio and minimizing interference

19. - E4D01

What is meant by the blocking dynamic range of a receiver?

Select	Answer
A	The difference in dB between the noise floor and the third-order intercept point
B	The minimum difference in dB between two signals which produce third-order intermodulation products greater than the noise floor
C	The difference in dB between the noise floor and the level of an incoming signal that will cause 1 dB of gain compression
D	The minimum difference in dB between the levels of two FM signals that will cause one signal to block the other

20. - E4E11

What could cause local AM broadcast band signals to combine to generate spurious signals in the MF or HF bands?

Select	Answer
A	One or more of the broadcast stations is transmitting an over-modulated signal
B	You are receiving skywave signals from a distant station
C	Nearby corroded metal joints are mixing and re-radiating the broadcast signals
D	Your station receiver IF amplifier stage is defective

21. - E5A03

What is the magnitude of the impedance of a series RLC circuit at resonance?

Select	Answer
A	Approximately equal to inductive reactance
B	High, as compared to the circuit resistance
C	Approximately equal to circuit resistance
D	Approximately equal to capacitive reactance

22. - E5B12

What is admittance?

Select	Answer
A	The inverse of impedance
B	The turns ratio of a transformer
C	The term for the gain of a field effect transistor
D	The inverse of Q factor

23. - E5C03

Which of the following represents an inductive reactance in polar coordinates?

Select	Answer
A	A positive magnitude
B	A negative phase angle
C	A positive phase angle
D	A negative magnitude

24. - 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 heat in the circuit
B	It is dissipated as kinetic energy 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

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

26. - E6B11

What is used to control the attenuation of RF signals by a PIN diode?

Select	Answer
A	Reverse voltage larger than the RF signal
B	Forward DC bias current
C	A sub-harmonic pump signal
D	Capacitance of an RF coupling capacitor

27. - E6C02

What happens when the level of a comparator's input signal crosses the threshold?

Select	Answer
A	The comparator enters latch-up
B	The IC input can be damaged
C	The comparator changes its output state
D	The feedback loop becomes unstable

28. - E6D12

What is inductor saturation?

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

29. - E6E07

What type of transmission line is used for connections to MMICs?

Select	Answer
A	Microstrip
B	Circular waveguide
C	Miniature coax
D	Parallel wire

30. - E6F09

What is the efficiency of a photovoltaic cell?

Select	Answer
A	The relative fraction of light that is converted to current
B	The output RF power divided by the input DC power
C	The open-circuit voltage divided by the short-circuit current under full illumination
D	Cost per kilowatt-hour generated

31. - E7A02

What is the function of a decade counter?

Select	Answer
A	It produces 10 output pulses for every input pulse
B	It decodes a binary number for display on a seven-segment LED display
C	It decodes a decimal number for display on a seven-segment LED display
D	It produces one output pulse for every 10 input pulses

32. - E7B01

For what portion of the signal cycle does each active element in a push-pull Class AB amplifier conduct?

Select	Answer
A	Exactly 180 degrees
B	The entire cycle
C	More than 180 degrees but less than 360 degrees
D	Less than 180 degrees

33. - E7C05

Which filter type is described as having ripple in the passband and a sharp cutoff?

Select	Answer
A	A Chebyshev filter
B	A Butterworth filter
C	An active LC filter
D	A passive op-amp filter

34. - E7D08

What type of circuit is shown in Figure E7-2?

Select	Answer
A	Grounded emitter amplifier
B	Switching voltage regulator
C	Monostable multivibrator
D	Linear voltage regulator

35. - E7E08

What are the principal frequencies that appear at the output of a mixer circuit?

Select	Answer
A	The square root of the product of input frequencies
B	The two input frequencies along with their sum and difference frequencies
C	Two and four times the original frequency
D	1.414 and 0.707 times the input frequency

36. - E7F10

What aspect of receiver analog-to-digital conversion determines the maximum receive bandwidth of a Direct Digital Conversion SDR?

Select	Answer
A	Processor latency
B	Sample clock phase noise
C	Sample rate
D	Sample width in bits

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	14
B	0.07
C	7
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 direct digital synthesizer
C	A hybrid synthesizer
D	A phase-locked loop synthesizer

39. - E8A02

Which of the following is a type of analog-to-digital conversion?

Select	Answer
A	Phase reversal
B	Successive approximation
C	Harmonic regeneration
D	Level shifting

40. - E8B10

What is frequency division multiplexing?

Select	Answer
A	The transmitted signal is divided into packets of information
B	Two or more information streams are merged into a digital combiner, which then pulse position modulates the transmitter
C	Two or more information streams are merged into a baseband, which then modulates the transmitter
D	The transmitted signal jumps from band to band at a predetermined rate

41. - E8C01

How is Forward Error Correction implemented?

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

42. - E8D11

What is one advantage of using ASCII code for data communications?

Select	Answer
A	It includes built-in error correction features
B	It is possible to transmit both upper and lower case text
C	It contains fewer information bits per character than any other code
D	It uses one character as a shift code to send numeric and special characters

43. - E9A01

What is an isotropic antenna?

Select	Answer
A	A horizontally polarized antenna used to compare Yagi antennas
B	A theoretical, omnidirectional antenna used as a reference for antenna gain
C	A spacecraft antenna used to direct signals toward Earth
D	A grounded antenna used to measure Earth conductivity

44. - E9B03

In the antenna radiation pattern shown in Figure E9-1, what is the front-to-side ratio?

Select	Answer
A	14 dB
B	18 dB
C	24 dB
D	12 dB

45. - E9C14

How does the performance of a horizontally polarized antenna mounted on the side of a hill compare with the same antenna mounted on flat ground?

Select	Answer
A	The horizontal beamwidth increases in the uphill direction
B	The main lobe takeoff angle decreases in the downhill direction
C	The horizontal beamwidth decreases in the downhill direction
D	The main lobe takeoff angle increases in the downhill direction

46. - E9D01

How much does the gain of an ideal parabolic dish antenna change when the operating frequency is doubled?

Select	Answer
A	4 dB
B	6 dB
C	2 dB
D	3 dB

47. - E9E09

Which of the following is used to shunt-feed a grounded tower at its base?

Select	Answer
A	Hairpin match
B	Gamma match
C	All these choices are correct
D	Double-bazooka match

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	13.3 meters
B	7.0 meters
C	10.6 meters
D	8.5 meters

49. - E9G05

Which of the following is a common use for a Smith chart?

Select	Answer
A	Determine the loss/100 feet of a transmission line, given the velocity factor and conductor materials
B	Determine the gain of an antenna given the physical and electrical parameters
C	Determine the impedance of a transmission line, given the physical dimensions
D	Determine the length and position of an impedance matching stub

50. - E9H11

What feature of a cardioid pattern antenna makes it useful for direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	High radiation angle
B	A very sharp single null
C	Broadband response
D	A very sharp peak

Figure E7-2

Figure E7-3

Figure E9-1