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

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1. - E0A10

What toxic material may be present in some electronic components such as high voltage capacitors and transformers?

Select	Answer
A	Polychlorinated biphenyls
B	Polytetrafluoroethylene
C	Polyethylene
D	Polymorphic silicon

2. - E1A14

Except in some parts of Alaska, what is the maximum power permitted on the 630 meter band?

Select	Answer
A	50 watts PEP
B	1 watt EIRP
C	5 watts EIRP
D	100 watts PEP

3. - E1B02

Which of the following is an acceptable bandwidth for Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) based voice or SSTV digital transmissions made on the HF amateur bands?

Select	Answer
A	3 kHz
B	10 kHz
C	20 kHz
D	15 kHz

4. - E1C10

What is the permitted mean power of any spurious emission relative to the mean power of the fundamental emission from a station transmitter or external RF amplifier installed after January 1, 2003 and transmitting on a frequency below 30 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	At least 73 dB below
B	At least 53 dB below
C	At least 43 dB below
D	At least 63 dB below

5. - E1D01

What is the definition of telemetry?

Select	Answer
A	One-way transmission of measurements at a distance from the measuring instrument
B	Two-way transmissions of data
C	One-way transmission that initiates, modifies, or terminates the functions of a device at a distance
D	Two-way transmissions in excess of 1000 feet

6. - E1E09

What may be the penalty for a VE who fraudulently administers or certifies an examination?

Select	Answer
A	A fine of up to $1000 per occurrence
B	A sentence of up to one year in prison
C	All these choices are correct
D	Revocation of the VE's amateur station license grant and the suspension of the VE's amateur operator license grant

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 satisfy the FCC's spurious emission standards when operated at the lesser of 1500 watts or its full output power
C	It must be capable of external RF switching between its input and output networks
D	It must exhibit a gain of 0 dB or less over its full output range

8. - E2A04

What is meant by the term mode? as applied to an amateur radio satellite?

Select	Answer
A	Whether the satellite is in a low earth or geostationary orbit
B	Whether the satellite is in a polar or equatorial orbit
C	The satellite's uplink and downlink frequency bands
D	The satellite's orientation with respect to the Earth

9. - E2B04

How is color information sent in analog SSTV?

Select	Answer
A	Color lines are sent sequentially
B	Color is sent in a color burst at the end of each line
C	Color is amplitude modulated on the frequency modulated intensity signal
D	Color information is sent on a 2.8 kHz subcarrier

10. - E2C12

What technique do individual nodes use to form a mesh network?

Select	Answer
A	Acting as store-and-forward digipeaters
B	Discovery and link establishment protocols
C	Forward error correction and Viterbi codes
D	Custom code plugs for the local trunking systems

11. - E2D04

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

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

12. - E2E06

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

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

13. - E3A06

What might help to restore contact when DX signals become too weak to copy across an entire HF band a few hours after sunset?

Select	Answer
A	Switch to a lower frequency HF band
B	Wait 24 hours before attempting another communication on the band
C	Wait 90 minutes or so for the signal degradation to pass
D	Switch to a higher frequency HF band

14. - E3B04

What is meant by the terms "extraordinary" and "ordinary" waves?

Select	Answer
A	Extraordinary waves describe rare long-skip propagation compared to ordinary waves, which travel shorter distances
B	Refracted rays and reflected waves
C	Long-path and short-path waves
D	Independent waves created in the ionosphere that are elliptically polarized

15. - E3C07

Which of the following descriptors indicates the greatest solar flare intensity?

Select	Answer
A	Class M
B	Class B
C	Class X
D	Class A

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 high frequency sine wave is displayed and the probe is adjusted for maximum amplitude
C	A DC voltage standard is displayed and the probe is adjusted until the displayed voltage is accurate
D	A frequency standard is displayed and the probe is adjusted until the deflection time is accurate

17. - E4B11

Which of the following can be measured with a vector network analyzer?

Select	Answer
A	Reflection coefficient
B	Output impedance
C	Input impedance
D	All these choices are correct

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

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	The receiver can tolerate signals up to 40 dB above the noise floor without producing third-order intermodulation products
C	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
D	Signals less than 40 dBm will not generate audible third-order intermodulation products

20. - E4E05

How can radio frequency interference from an AC motor be suppressed?

Select	Answer
A	By installing a brute-force AC-line filter in series with the motor leads
B	By using a ground-fault current interrupter in the circuit used to power the motor
C	By installing a bypass capacitor in series with the motor leads
D	By installing a high-pass filter in series with the motor's power leads

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	1.78 MHz
B	22.36 MHz
C	3.56 MHz
D	44.72 MHz

22. - E5B02

What letter is commonly used to represent susceptance?

Select	Answer
A	G
B	Y
C	B
D	X

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	Faraday grid
C	Rectangular coordinates
D	Elliptical coordinates

24. - E5D02

Why is it important to keep lead lengths short for components used in circuits for VHF and above?

Select	Answer
A	To avoid unwanted inductive reactance
B	To increase the thermal time constant
C	All these choices are correct
D	To maintain component lifetime

25. - E6A01

In what application is gallium arsenide used as a semiconductor material?

Select	Answer
A	In very low-frequency RF circuits
B	In microwave circuits
C	In high-power audio circuits
D	In high-current rectifier circuits

26. - E6B05

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

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

27. - E6C08

In Figure E6-3, what is the schematic symbol for a NAND gate?

Select	Answer
A	2
B	1
C	4
D	3

28. - E6D06

What core material property determines the inductance of an inductor?

Select	Answer
A	Thermal impedance
B	Permeability
C	Resistance
D	Reactivity

29. - E6E04

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

Select	Answer
A	50 ohms
B	10 ohms
C	300 ohms
D	450 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	A frequency modulated helium-neon laser
D	An amplitude modulated helium-neon laser

31. - E7A01

Which circuit is bistable?

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

32. - E7B01

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

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

33. - E7C04

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

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

34. - E7D06

What is the purpose of Q1 in the circuit shown in Figure E7-2?

Select	Answer
A	It provides negative feedback to improve regulation
B	It provides a constant load for the voltage source
C	It provides D1 with current
D	It controls the current supplied to the load

35. - E7E10

How does a diode envelope detector function?

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

36. - E7F04

What is a common method of generating an SSB signal using digital signal processing?

Select	Answer
A	Mixing products are converted to voltages and subtracted by adder circuits
B	Varying quartz crystal characteristics emulated in digital form
C	Signals are combined in quadrature phase relationship
D	A frequency synthesizer removes the unwanted sidebands

37. - E7G02

What is ringing in a filter?

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

38. - E7H12

Which of the following must be done to ensure that a crystal oscillator provides the frequency specified by the crystal manufacturer?

Select	Answer
A	Provide the crystal with a specified parallel capacitance
B	Bias the crystal at a specified voltage
C	Bias the crystal at a specified current
D	Provide the crystal with a specified parallel inductance

39. - E8A03

What type of wave does a Fourier analysis show to be made up of sine waves of a given fundamental frequency plus all its harmonics?

Select	Answer
A	A sine wave
B	A square wave
C	A sawtooth wave
D	A cosine wave

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

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. - E8D03

How does the spread spectrum technique of frequency hopping work?

Select	Answer
A	A binary bit stream is used to shift the phase of an RF carrier very rapidly in a pseudorandom sequence
B	If interference is detected by the receiver it will signal the transmitter to change frequencies
C	If interference is detected by the receiver it will signal the transmitter to wait until the frequency is clear
D	The frequency of the transmitted signal is changed very rapidly according to a pseudorandom sequence also used by the receiving station

43. - E9A06

What is the effective radiated power relative to a dipole of a repeater station with 200 watts transmitter power output, 4 dB feed line loss, 3.2 dB duplexer loss, 0.8 dB circulator loss, and 10 dBd antenna gain?

Select	Answer
A	126 watts
B	2000 watts
C	300 watts
D	317 watts

44. - E9B02

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

Select	Answer
A	14 dB
B	24 dB
C	36 dB
D	18 dB

45. - E9C11

How is the far-field elevation pattern of a vertically polarized antenna affected by being mounted over seawater versus soil?

Select	Answer
A	Additional higher vertical angle lobes will appear
B	The low-angle radiation decreases
C	The low-angle radiation increases
D	Fewer vertical angle lobes will be present

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 minimize the Q
C	To minimize losses
D	To lower the radiation angle

47. - E9E04

What is the purpose of the series capacitor in a gamma-type antenna matching network?

Select	Answer
A	To provide DC isolation between the feed line and the antenna
B	To cancel the inductive reactance of the matching network
C	To provide a rejection notch that prevents the radiation of harmonics
D	To transform the antenna impedance to a higher value

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	7.0 meters
B	13.3 meters
C	8.5 meters
D	10.6 meters

49. - E9G02

What type of coordinate system is used in a Smith chart?

Select	Answer
A	Resistance circles and reactance arcs
B	Resistance lines and reactance chords
C	Voltage lines and current chords
D	Voltage circles and current arcs

50. - E9H03

What is Receiving Directivity Factor (RDF)?

Select	Answer
A	Relative directivity compared to a dipole
B	Relative directivity compared to isotropic
C	Forward gain compared to average gain over the entire hemisphere
D	Forward gain compared to the gain in the reverse direction

Figure E6-3

Figure E7-2

Figure E9-1