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

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

3. - E1B07

To what type of regulations does PRB-1 apply?

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

4. - E1C04

What is meant by IARP?

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

5. - E1D08

Which VHF amateur bands have frequencies authorized for space stations?

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

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 VEC coordinating the session
C	Each administering VE
D	The VE session manager

7. - E1F09

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

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

8. - E2A03

How is the signal inverted by an inverting linear transponder?

Select	Answer
A	The signal is detected and remodulated on the reverse sideband
B	The signal is reduced to I and Q components and the Q component is filtered out
C	The signal is passed through a mixer and the difference rather than the sum is transmitted
D	The signal is passed through a non-linear filter

9. - E2B10

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

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

10. - E2C03

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

Select	Answer
A	33 centimeters
B	2 meters
C	30 meters
D	6 meters

11. - E2D04

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

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

12. - E2E04

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

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

13. - E3A03

When scheduling EME contacts, which of these conditions will generally result in the least path loss?

Select	Answer
A	When the MUF is above 30 MHz
B	When the moon is at apogee
C	When the moon is full
D	When the moon is at perigee

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	Propagation across the geomagnetic equator
C	Signals reflected back toward the transmitting station
D	Propagation away from the great circle bearing between stations

15. - E3C14

Why does the radio-path horizon distance exceed the geometric horizon?

Select	Answer
A	E-region skip
B	Due to the Doppler effect
C	D-region skip
D	Downward bending due to density variations in the atmosphere

16. - E4A08

Which of the following measures SWR?

Select	Answer
A	A spectrum analyzer
B	A Q meter
C	An antenna analyzer
D	An ohmmeter

17. - E4B07

What do the subscripts of S parameters represent?

Select	Answer
A	Frequency order of the measurements
B	Relative quality of the data
C	The port or ports at which measurements are made
D	The relative time between measurements

18. - E4C05

What does a receiver noise floor of -174 dBm represent?

Select	Answer
A	The theoretical noise in a 1 Hz bandwidth at the input of a perfect receiver at room temperature
B	The galactic noise contribution to minimum detectable signal
C	The noise figure of a 1 Hz bandwidth receiver
D	The minimum detectable signal as a function of receive frequency

19. - E4D11

Why are odd-order intermodulation products, created within a receiver, of particular interest compared to other products?

Select	Answer
A	Odd-order intermodulation produces three products for every input signal within the band of interest
B	Odd-order products overload the IF filters
C	Odd-order products of two signals in the band of interest are also likely to be within the band
D	Odd-order products are an indication of poor image rejection

20. - E4E04

How can conducted and radiated noise caused by an automobile alternator be suppressed?

Select	Answer
A	By connecting the radio's power leads directly to the battery and by installing coaxial capacitors in line with the alternator leads
B	By installing a high-pass filter in series with the radio's power lead and a low-pass filter in parallel with the field lead
C	By installing a noise suppression resistor and a blocking capacitor in both leads
D	By installing filter capacitors in series with the DC power lead and a blocking capacitor in the field lead

21. - E5A09

How is the Q of an RLC parallel resonant circuit calculated?

Select	Answer
A	Resistance divided by the reactance of either the inductance or capacitance
B	Reactance of either the inductance or capacitance divided by the resistance
C	Reactance of the inductance multiplied by the reactance of the capacitance
D	Reactance of either the inductance or capacitance multiplied by the resistance

22. - E5B06

What is susceptance?

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

23. - E5C10

Which point on Figure E5-1 best represents the impedance of a series circuit consisting of a 400-ohm resistor and a 38-picofarad capacitor at 14 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	Point 6
B	Point 2
C	Point 4
D	Point 5

24. - E5D13

How many watts are consumed in a circuit consisting of a 100-ohm resistor in series with a 100-ohm inductive reactance drawing 1 ampere?

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

25. - E6A08

What term indicates the frequency at which the grounded-base current gain of a transistor has decreased to 0.7 of the gain obtainable at 1 kHz?

Select	Answer
A	Corner frequency
B	Beta cutoff frequency
C	Alpha cutoff frequency
D	Alpha rejection frequency

26. - E6B11

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

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

27. - E6C11

In Figure E6-3, what is the schematic symbol for the NOT operation (inverter)?

Select	Answer
A	4
B	6
C	2
D	5

28. - E6D04

Which materials are commonly used as a core in an inductor?

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

29. - E6E01

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

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

30. - E6F06

Which of these materials is most commonly used to create photoconductive devices?

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

31. - E7A01

Which circuit is bistable?

Select	Answer
A	A flip-flop
B	An OR gate
C	A bipolar amplifier
D	An AND gate

32. - E7B03

Which of the following components form the output of a class D amplifier circuit?

Select	Answer
A	A matched load resistor to prevent damage by switching transients
B	A temperature compensating load resistor to improve linearity
C	A low-pass filter to remove switching signal components
D	A high-pass filter to compensate for low gain at low frequencies

33. - E7C05

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

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

34. - E7D08

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

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

35. - E7E11

Which type of detector circuit is used for demodulating SSB signals?

Select	Answer
A	Discriminator
B	Phase detector
C	Product detector
D	Phase comparator

36. - E7F14

Which of the following would allow a digital signal processing filter to create a sharper filter response?

Select	Answer
A	More taps
B	Complex phasor representations
C	Higher data rate
D	Double-precision math routines

37. - E7G01

What is the typical output impedance of an op-amp?

Select	Answer
A	Very high
B	1000 ohms
C	Very low
D	100 ohms

38. - E7H07

How can an oscillator's microphonic responses be reduced?

Select	Answer
A	Reduce noise on the oscillator's power supply
B	Mechanically isolate the oscillator circuitry from its enclosure
C	Increase the bias voltage
D	Use NP0 capacitors

39. - E8A02

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

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

40. - E8B03

What is the modulation index of an FM-phone signal having a maximum frequency deviation of 3000 Hz either side of the carrier frequency when the modulating frequency is 1000 Hz?

Select	Answer
A	3000
B	3
C	0.3
D	1000

41. - E8C10

How may data rate be increased without increasing bandwidth?

Select	Answer
A	Increasing analog-to-digital conversion resolution
B	Using forward error correction
C	Using a more efficient digital code
D	It is impossible

42. - E8D10

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

Select	Answer
A	Baudot uses 7 data bits per character, ASCII uses 8; Baudot has no letters/figures shift code, ASCII uses 2 letters/figures shift codes
B	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
C	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
D	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

43. - E9A12

How much gain does an antenna have compared to a 1/2-wavelength dipole when it has 6 dB gain over an isotropic antenna?

Select	Answer
A	8.15 dB
B	2.79 dB
C	3.85 dB
D	6.0 dB

44. - E9B05

What type of antenna pattern is shown in Figure E9-2?

Select	Answer
A	Azimuth
B	Elevation
C	Radiation resistance
D	Polarization

45. - E9C09

Which of the following describes a G5RV antenna?

Select	Answer
A	A wide band dipole using shorted coaxial cable for the radiating elements and fed with a�4:1 balun
B	A multi-band trap antenna
C	A multi-band dipole antenna fed with coax and a balun through a selected length of open wire transmission line
D	A phased array antenna consisting of multiple loops

46. - E9D03

Where should a high Q loading coil be placed to minimize losses in a shortened vertical antenna?

Select	Answer
A	As low as possible on the vertical radiator
B	At a voltage node
C	Near the center of the vertical radiator
D	As close to the transmitter as possible

47. - E9E01

What system matches a higher-impedance transmission line to a lower-impedance antenna by connecting the line to the driven element in two places spaced a fraction of a wavelength each side of element center?

Select	Answer
A	The delta matching system
B	The stub matching system
C	The omega matching system
D	The gamma matching system

48. - E9F11

What impedance does a 1/8-wavelength transmission line present to a generator when the line is open at the far end?

Select	Answer
A	The same as the characteristic impedance of the line
B	A capacitive reactance
C	An inductive reactance
D	Infinite

49. - 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	Polar axis
C	Impedance axis
D	Reactance axis

50. - E9H09

What is a Pennant antenna?

Select	Answer
A	A four-element, high-gain vertical array invented by George Pennant
B	A small, vertically oriented receiving antenna consisting of a triangular loop terminated in approximately 900 ohms
C	A stealth antenna built to look like a flagpole
D	A form of rhombic antenna terminated in a variable capacitor to provide frequency diversity

Figure E5-1

Figure E6-3

Figure E7-2

Figure E9-2

Figure E9-3