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

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1. - E0A06

Why are there separate electric (E) and magnetic (H) field MPE limits?

Select	Answer
A	E field and H field radiation intensity peaks can occur at different locations
B	All these choices are correct
C	The body reacts to electromagnetic radiation from both the E and H fields
D	Ground reflections and scattering make the field strength vary with location

2. - E1A01

Which of the following carrier frequencies is illegal for LSB AFSK emissions on the 17 meter band RTTY and data segment of 18.068 to 18.110 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	18.110 MHz
B	18.107 MHz
C	18.068 MHz
D	18.100 MHz

3. - E1B09

Which amateur stations may be operated under RACES rules?

Select	Answer
A	Any FCC-licensed amateur station participating in the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS)
B	Any FCC-licensed amateur station except a Technician Class
C	Any FCC-licensed amateur station certified by the responsible civil defense organization for the area served
D	Only those club stations licensed to Amateur Extra Class operators

4. - E1C13

What notifications must be given before transmitting on the 630 meter or 2200 meter bands?

Select	Answer
A	Operators must inform the FAA of their intent to operate, giving their call sign and distance to the nearest runway
B	An environmental impact statement must be filed with the Department of the Interior
C	A special endorsement must be requested from the FCC
D	Operators must inform the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) of their call sign and coordinates of the station

5. - E1D11

Which amateur stations are eligible to operate as Earth stations?

Select	Answer
A	Only those of Amateur Extra Class operators
B	Any amateur station, subject to the privileges of the class of operator license held by the control operator
C	Any amateur station whose licensee has filed a pre-space notification with the FCC's International Bureau
D	Only those of General, Advanced or Amateur Extra Class operators

6. - E1E12

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

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

7. - E1F09

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

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

8. - E2A11

What type of antenna can be used to minimize the effects of spin modulation and Faraday rotation?

Select	Answer
A	An isotropic antenna
B	A log-periodic dipole array
C	A circularly polarized antenna
D	A linearly polarized antenna

9. - E2B10

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

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

10. - E2C07

What is the Cabrillo format?

Select	Answer
A	A standard for submission of electronic contest logs
B	A method of exchanging information during a contest QSO
C	The most common set of contest rules
D	The rules of order for meetings between contest sponsors

11. - E2D06

Which of the following describes a method of establishing EME contacts?

Select	Answer
A	High-speed CW identification to avoid fading
B	Time synchronous transmissions alternately from each station
C	Judging optimum transmission times by monitoring beacons reflected from the moon
D	Storing and forwarding digital messages

12. - E2E05

Which of these digital modes does not support keyboard-to-keyboard operation?

Select	Answer
A	MFSK
B	PACTOR
C	PSK31
D	RTTY

13. - E3A05

Tropospheric propagation of microwave signals often occurs in association with what phenomenon?

Select	Answer
A	Warm and cold fronts
B	Sprites and jets
C	Lightning discharges
D	Grayline

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	Signals reflected back toward the transmitting station
D	Successive ionospheric refractions without an intermediate reflection from the ground

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	Southward
C	Westward
D	Eastward

16. - E4A03

Which of the following test instruments is used to display spurious signals and/or intermodulation distortion products generated by an SSB transmitter?

Select	Answer
A	A logic analyzer
B	A spectrum analyzer
C	A time-domain reflectometer
D	A wattmeter

17. - E4B04

Which S parameter represents input port return loss or reflection coefficient (equivalent to VSWR)?

Select	Answer
A	S11
B	S12
C	S21
D	S22

18. - E4C12

Which of the following has the largest effect on an SDR receiver's dynamic range?

Select	Answer
A	Anti-aliasing input filter bandwidth
B	RAM speed used for data storage
C	CPU register width in bits
D	Analog-to-digital converter sample width in bits

19. - E4D10

What does a third-order intercept level of 40 dBm mean with respect to receiver performance?

Select	Answer
A	A pair of 1 mW input signals will produce a third-order intermodulation product that is 40 dB stronger than the input signal
B	Signals less than 40 dBm will not generate audible third-order intermodulation products
C	The receiver can tolerate signals up to 40 dB above the noise floor without producing third-order intermodulation products
D	A pair of 40 dBm input signals will theoretically generate a third-order intermodulation product that has the same output amplitude as either of the input signals

20. - E4E08

What current flows equally on all conductors of an unshielded multi-conductor cable?

Select	Answer
A	Common-mode current
B	Reactive current only
C	Return current
D	Differential-mode current

21. - 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 current leads the voltage by 90 degrees
C	The voltage and current are in phase
D	The voltage leads the current by 90 degrees

22. - E5B07

What is the phase angle between the voltage across and the current through a series RLC circuit if XC is 500 ohms, R is 1 kilohm, and XL is 250 ohms?

Select	Answer
A	68.2 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
B	14.0 degrees with the voltage leading the current
C	14.0 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
D	68.2 degrees with the voltage leading the current

23. - E5C07

Where is the impedance of a pure resistance plotted on rectangular coordinates?

Select	Answer
A	On the horizontal axis
B	On the vertical axis
C	On a line through the origin, slanted at 45 degrees
D	On a horizontal line, offset vertically above the horizontal axis

24. - E5D15

What is the power factor of an RL circuit having a 45-degree phase angle between the voltage and the current?

Select	Answer
A	1.0
B	0.5
C	0.707
D	0.866

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

26. - E6B07

What is the failure mechanism when a junction diode fails due to excessive current?

Select	Answer
A	Excessive inverse voltage
B	Charge carrier depletion
C	Insufficient forward voltage
D	Excessive junction temperature

27. - E6C05

What is an advantage of CMOS logic devices over TTL devices?

Select	Answer
A	Immune to damage from static discharge
B	Lower distortion
C	Differential output capability
D	Lower power consumption

28. - E6D06

What core material property determines the inductance of an inductor?

Select	Answer
A	Thermal impedance
B	Permeability
C	Reactivity
D	Resistance

29. - E6E03

Which of the following materials is likely to provide the highest frequency of operation when used in MMICs?

Select	Answer
A	Gallium nitride
B	Silicon nitride
C	Silicon
D	Silicon dioxide

30. - E6F05

Which describes an optical shaft encoder?

Select	Answer
A	A device that measures the strength of a beam of light using analog to digital conversion
B	A device for generating RTTY signals by means of a rotating light source
C	A device that detects rotation of a control by interrupting a light source with a patterned wheel
D	A digital encryption device often used to encrypt spacecraft control signals

31. - E7A10

What is a truth table?

Select	Answer
A	A list of inputs and corresponding outputs for a digital device
B	A table of logic symbols that indicate the logic states of an op-amp
C	A diagram showing logic states when the digital device output is true
D	A table of logic symbols that indicate the high logic states of an op-amp

32. - E7B09

Which of the following describes how the loading and tuning capacitors are to be adjusted when tuning a vacuum tube RF power amplifier that employs a Pi-network output circuit?

Select	Answer
A	The tuning capacitor is set to maximum capacitance and the loading capacitor is adjusted for minimum plate permissible current
B	The loading capacitor is set to maximum capacitance and the tuning capacitor is adjusted for minimum allowable plate current
C	The tuning capacitor is adjusted for minimum plate current, and the loading capacitor is adjusted for maximum permissible plate current
D	The loading capacitor is adjusted to minimum plate current while alternately adjusting the tuning capacitor for maximum allowable plate current

33. - E7C06

What are the distinguishing features of an elliptical filter?

Select	Answer
A	Extremely sharp cutoff with one or more notches in the stop band
B	Extremely flat response over its pass band with gradually rounded stop band corners
C	Gradual passband rolloff with extreme stop band ripple
D	Gradual passband rolloff with minimal stop band ripple

34. - E7D03

What device is typically used as a stable voltage reference in a linear voltage regulator?

Select	Answer
A	An SCR
B	A tunnel diode
C	A Zener diode
D	A varactor diode

35. - E7E07

What is meant by the term "baseband" in radio communications?

Select	Answer
A	The lowest frequency band that the transmitter or receiver covers
B	The unmodulated bandwidth of the transmitted signal
C	The frequency range occupied by a message signal prior to modulation
D	The basic oscillator frequency in an FM transmitter that is multiplied to increase the deviation and carrier frequency

36. - E7F14

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

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

37. - E7G02

What is ringing in a filter?

Select	Answer
A	Partial cancellation of the signal over a range of frequencies
B	Undesired oscillations added to the desired signal
C	An echo caused by a long time delay
D	A reduction in high frequency response

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

39. - E8A05

What of the following instruments would be the most accurate for measuring the RMS voltage of a complex waveform?

Select	Answer
A	A D'Arsonval meter
B	A true-RMS calculating meter
C	A grid dip meter
D	An absorption wave meter

40. - E8B08

What describes Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing?

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

41. - E8C02

What is the definition of symbol rate in a digital transmission?

Select	Answer
A	The duration of each bit in a message sent over the air
B	The number of characters carried per second by the station-to-station link
C	The rate at which the waveform changes to convey information
D	The number of control characters in a message packet

42. - E8D11

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

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

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	6.0 dB
B	3.85 dB
C	8.15 dB
D	2.79 dB

44. - E9B05

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

Select	Answer
A	Elevation
B	Polarization
C	Radiation resistance
D	Azimuth

45. - E9C07

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

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

46. - E9D09

What is the function of a loading coil used as part of an HF mobile antenna?

Select	Answer
A	To increase the SWR bandwidth
B	To lower the losses
C	To lower the Q
D	To cancel capacitive reactance

47. - E9E07

What parameter describes the interactions at the load end of a mismatched transmission line?

Select	Answer
A	Velocity factor
B	Characteristic impedance
C	Reflection coefficient
D	Dielectric constant

48. - E9F07

How does ladder line compare to small-diameter coaxial cable such as RG-58 at 50 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	Smaller reflection coefficient
B	Higher SWR
C	Lower velocity factor
D	Lower loss

49. - E9G07

On the Smith chart shown in Figure E9-3, what is the only straight line shown?

Select	Answer
A	The current axis
B	The reactance axis
C	The voltage axis
D	The resistance axis

50. - E9H05

What is the main drawback of a small wire-loop antenna for direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	It has no clearly defined null
B	It has a bidirectional pattern
C	All these choices are correct
D	It is practical for use only on VHF and higher bands

Figure E9-2

Figure E9-3