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

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1. - E0A05

What is one of the potential hazards of operating in the amateur radio microwave bands?

Select	Answer
A	The extremely high frequency energy can damage the joints of antenna structures
B	Microwaves often travel long distances by ionospheric reflection
C	The high gain antennas commonly used can result in high exposure levels
D	Microwaves are ionizing radiation

2. - E1A09

What action or actions should you take if your digital message forwarding station inadvertently forwards a communication that violates FCC rules?

Select	Answer
A	All these choices are correct
B	Notify the originating station that the communication does not comply with FCC rules
C	Notify the nearest FCC Field Engineers office
D	Discontinue forwarding the communication as soon as you become aware of it

3. - E1B09

Which amateur stations may be operated under RACES rules?

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

4. - E1C05

When may an automatically controlled station originate third party communications?

Select	Answer
A	Never
B	When approved by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration
C	When agreed upon by the sending or receiving station
D	Only when transmitting RTTY or data emissions

5. - E1D05

What must be posted at the station location of a station being operated by telecommand on or within 50 km of the earth's surface?

Select	Answer
A	A photocopy of the station license
B	All these choices are correct
C	A label with the name, address, and telephone number of the station licensee
D	A label with the name, address, and telephone number of the control operator

6. - E1E05

What is the minimum passing score on all amateur operator license examinations?

Select	Answer
A	Minimum passing score of 70%
B	Minimum passing score of 77%
C	Minimum passing score of 80%
D	Minimum passing score of 74%

7. - E1F11

Which of the following best describes one of the standards that must be met by an external RF power amplifier if it is to qualify for a grant of FCC certification?

Select	Answer
A	It must produce full legal output when driven by not more than 5 watts of mean RF input power
B	It must be capable of external RF switching between its input and output networks
C	It must satisfy the FCC's spurious emission standards when operated at the lesser of 1500 watts or its full output power
D	It must exhibit a gain of 0 dB or less over its full output range

8. - E2A12

What is the purpose of digital store-and-forward functions on an amateur radio satellite?

Select	Answer
A	To delay download of telemetry between satellites
B	To upload operational software for the transponder
C	To relay messages between satellites
D	To store digital messages in the satellite for later download by other stations

9. - E2B12

What signals SSTV receiving software to begin a new picture line?

Select	Answer
A	Specific tone frequencies
B	A two-tone signal
C	Specific tone amplitudes
D	Elapsed time

10. - E2C02

Which of the following best describes the term self-spotting? in connection with HF contest operating?

Select	Answer
A	The acceptable practice of manually posting the call signs of stations on a spotting network
B	An automatic method for rapidly zero beating or tuning to a station's frequency before calling that station
C	A manual technique for rapidly zero beating or tuning to a station's frequency before calling that station
D	The often-prohibited practice of posting one's own call sign and frequency on a spotting network

11. - E2D02

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

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

12. - E2E10

Which of these digital modes has the narrowest bandwidth?

Select	Answer
A	170 Hz shift, 45-baud RTTY
B	MFSK16
C	PSK31
D	300-baud packet

13. - E3A05

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

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

14. - E3B12

What is the primary characteristic of chordal hop propagation?

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

15. - E3C01

What does the radio communication term "ray tracing" describe?

Select	Answer
A	Determining the radiation pattern from an array of antennas
B	Modeling a radio wave's path through the ionosphere
C	The process in which an electronic display presents a pattern
D	Evaluating high voltage sources for x-rays

16. - E4A02

Which of the following parameters does a spectrum analyzer display on the vertical and horizontal axes?

Select	Answer
A	RF amplitude and time
B	SWR and time
C	SWR and frequency
D	RF amplitude and frequency

17. - E4B03

Which S parameter is equivalent to forward gain?

Select	Answer
A	S22
B	S12
C	S21
D	S11

18. - E4C03

What is the term for the suppression in an FM receiver of one signal by another stronger signal on the same frequency?

Select	Answer
A	Cross-modulation interference
B	Capture effect
C	Desensitization
D	Frequency discrimination

19. - 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

20. - E4E03

Which of the following signals might a receiver noise blanker be able to remove from desired signals?

Select	Answer
A	Signals that appear at one IF but not another
B	Signals that have a sharply peaked frequency distribution
C	Signals that are constant at all IF levels
D	Signals that appear across a wide bandwidth

21. - E5A14

What is the resonant frequency of an RLC circuit if R is 22 ohms, L is 50 microhenries and C is 40 picofarads?

Select	Answer
A	44.72 MHz
B	22.36 MHz
C	3.56 MHz
D	1.78 MHz

22. - E5B02

What letter is commonly used to represent susceptance?

Select	Answer
A	B
B	Y
C	G
D	X

23. - E5C06

What does the impedance 50-j25 represent?

Select	Answer
A	50 ohms resistance in series with 25 ohms capacitive reactance
B	25 ohms resistance in series with 50 ohms capacitive reactance
C	50 ohms resistance in series with 25 ohms inductive reactance
D	25 ohms resistance in series with 50 ohms inductive reactance

24. - E5D14

What is reactive power?

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

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	Alpha rejection frequency
B	Alpha cutoff frequency
C	Beta cutoff frequency
D	Corner frequency

26. - E6B01

What is the most useful characteristic of a Zener diode?

Select	Answer
A	An internal capacitance that varies with the applied voltage
B	A constant voltage drop under conditions of varying current
C	A constant current drop under conditions of varying voltage
D	A negative resistance region

27. - E6C04

Which of the following is an advantage of BiCMOS logic?

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

28. - E6D05

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

Select	Answer
A	Ferrite toroids are easier to use with surface mount technology
B	Ferrite toroids generally require fewer turns to produce a given inductance value
C	Ferrite toroids generally have lower initial permeability
D	Ferrite toroids generally have better temperature stability

29. - E6E04

Which is the most common input and output impedance of circuits that use MMICs?

Select	Answer
A	450 ohms
B	300 ohms
C	50 ohms
D	10 ohms

30. - E6F03

What is the most common configuration of an optoisolator or optocoupler?

Select	Answer
A	A lens and a photomultiplier
B	An LED and a phototransistor
C	An amplitude modulated helium-neon laser
D	A frequency modulated helium-neon laser

31. - E7A09

What logical operation is performed by an exclusive NOR gate?

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

32. - 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

33. - E7C08

Which of the following factors has the greatest effect on the bandwidth and response shape of a crystal ladder filter?

Select	Answer
A	The relative frequencies of the individual crystals
B	The gain of the RF stage preceding the filter
C	The amplitude of the signals passing through the filter
D	The DC voltage applied to the quartz crystal

34. - E7D12

What is the dropout voltage of an analog voltage regulator?

Select	Answer
A	Maximum that the output voltage may decrease at rated load
B	Minimum input voltage for rated power dissipation
C	Maximum output voltage drops when the input voltage is varied over its specified range
D	Minimum input-to-output voltage required to maintain regulation

35. - E7E10

How does a diode envelope detector function?

Select	Answer
A	By sensing the change of reactance in the diode with respect to frequency
B	By rectification and filtering of RF signals
C	By breakdown of the Zener voltage
D	By mixing signals with noise in the transition region of the diode

36. - E7F12

Which of the following is an advantage of a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter vs an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) digital filter?

Select	Answer
A	FIR filters can delay all frequency components of the signal by the same amount
B	All these choices are correct
C	FIR filters are easier to implement for a given set of passband rolloff requirements
D	FIR filters can respond faster to impulses

37. - E7G10

What absolute voltage gain can be expected from the circuit in Figure E7-3 when R1 is 1800 ohms and RF is 68 kilohms?

Select	Answer
A	76
B	38
C	0.03
D	1

38. - E7H13

Which of the following is a technique for providing highly accurate and stable oscillators needed for microwave transmission and reception?

Select	Answer
A	Use a temperature-controlled high Q dielectric resonator
B	All these choices are correct
C	Use a rubidium stabilized reference oscillator
D	Use a GPS signal reference

39. - E8A01

What is the name of the process that shows that a square wave is made up of a sine wave plus all its odd harmonics?

Select	Answer
A	Differential analysis
B	Vector analysis
C	Numerical analysis
D	Fourier analysis

40. - E8B10

What is frequency division multiplexing?

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

41. - E8C05

What is the approximate bandwidth of a 13-WPM International Morse Code transmission?

Select	Answer
A	52 Hz
B	13 Hz
C	26 Hz
D	104 Hz

42. - E8D10

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

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

43. - E9A10

Which of the following improves the efficiency of a ground-mounted quarter-wave vertical antenna?

Select	Answer
A	Installing a radial system
B	All these choices are correct
C	Shortening the radiating element
D	Isolating the coax shield from ground

44. - E9B04

What is the front-to-back ratio of the radiation pattern shown in Figure E92?

Select	Answer
A	3 dB
B	38 dB
C	28 dB
D	15 dB

45. - E9C01

What is the radiation pattern of two 1/4-wavelength vertical antennas spaced 1/2-wavelength apart and fed 180 degrees out of phase?

Select	Answer
A	A figure-8 broadside to the axis of the array
B	Omni-directional
C	Cardioid
D	A figure-8 oriented along the axis of the array

46. - E9D09

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

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

47. - E9E06

Which of these feed line impedances would be suitable for constructing a quarter-wave Q-section for matching a 100-ohm loop to 50-ohm feed line?

Select	Answer
A	62 ohms
B	450 ohms
C	50 ohms
D	75 ohms

48. - E9F02

Which of the following has the biggest effect on the velocity factor of a transmission line?

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

49. - E9G08

What is the process of normalization with regard to a Smith chart?

Select	Answer
A	Reassigning impedance values with regard to the prime center
B	Reassigning reactance values with regard to the resistance axis
C	Reassigning prime center with regard to the reactance axis
D	Reassigning resistance values with regard to the reactance axis

50. - E9H08

What is the function of a sense antenna?

Select	Answer
A	It increases the sensitivity of a DF antenna array
B	It provides diversity reception that cancels multipath signals
C	It allows DF antennas to receive signals at different vertical angles
D	It modifies the pattern of a DF antenna array to provide a null in one direction

Figure E7-1

Figure E7-3