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	Polyethylene
B	Polychlorinated biphenyls
C	Polymorphic silicon
D	Polytetrafluoroethylene

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 holding an FCC issued amateur license or who is authorized for alien reciprocal operation
D	Any person named in an amateur station license grant or a person holding an unrestricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit

3. - E1B05

What is the National Radio Quiet Zone?

Select	Answer
A	An area in Puerto Rico surrounding the Arecibo Radio Telescope
B	An area surrounding the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
C	An area in New Mexico surrounding the White Sands Test Area
D	An area in Florida surrounding Cape Canaveral

4. - E1C02

Which of the following types of communications may be transmitted to amateur stations in foreign countries?

Select	Answer
A	All these choices are correct
B	Communications incidental to the purpose of the amateur service and remarks of a personal nature
C	Business-related messages for non-profit organizations
D	Messages intended for users of the maritime satellite service

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

6. - E1E03

What is a Volunteer Examiner Coordinator?

Select	Answer
A	An organization that has entered into an agreement with the FCC to coordinate, prepare, and administer amateur operator license examinations
B	A person who has volunteered to administer amateur operator license examinations
C	A person who has volunteered to prepare amateur operator license examinations
D	The person who has entered into an agreement with the FCC to be the VE session manager

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 exhibit a gain of 0 dB or less over its full output range
D	It must be capable of external RF switching between its input and output networks

8. - E2A08

Why should effective radiated power to a satellite that uses a linear transponder be limited?

Select	Answer
A	To avoid reducing the downlink power to all other users
B	To prevent the satellite from emitting out-of-band signals
C	To avoid interfering with terrestrial QSOs
D	To prevent creating errors in the satellite telemetry

9. - E2B09

What hardware, other than a receiver with SSB capability and a suitable computer, is needed to decode SSTV using Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM)?

Select	Answer
A	No other hardware is needed
B	A special front end limiter
C	A special notch filter to remove synchronization pulses
D	A special IF converter

10. - E2C09

What type of equipment is commonly used to implement an amateur radio mesh network?

Select	Answer
A	A 2 meter VHF transceiver with a 1200 baud modem
B	An optical cable connection between the USB ports of 2 separate computers
C	A 440 MHz transceiver with a 9600 baud modem
D	A wireless router running custom firmware

11. - E2D03

Which of the following digital modes is especially useful for EME communications?

Select	Answer
A	JT65
B	Olivia
C	MSK144
D	PACTOR III

12. - E2E10

Which of these digital modes has the narrowest bandwidth?

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

13. - E3A12

What is the cause of auroral activity?

Select	Answer
A	An extreme low-pressure area in the polar regions
B	The interaction in the E layer of charged particles from the Sun with the Earth's magnetic field
C	The interaction in the F2 layer between the solar wind and the Van Allen belt
D	Meteor showers concentrated in the extreme northern and southern latitudes

14. - E3B12

What is the primary characteristic of chordal hop propagation?

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

15. - E3C07

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

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

16. - E4A10

Which of the following displays multiple digital signal states simultaneously?

Select	Answer
A	Logic analyzer
B	Network analyzer
C	Bit error rate tester
D	Modulation monitor

17. - E4B09

What is indicated if the current reading on an RF ammeter placed in series with the antenna feed line of a transmitter increases as the transmitter is tuned to resonance?

Select	Answer
A	There is possibly a short to ground in the feed line
B	There is an impedance mismatch between the antenna and feed line
C	There is more power going into the antenna
D	The transmitter is not properly neutralized

18. - E4C11

Why can an attenuator be used to reduce receiver overload on the lower frequency HF bands with little or no impact on signal-to-noise ratio?

Select	Answer
A	The attenuator has a noise filter to suppress interference
B	Atmospheric noise is generally greater than internally generated noise even after attenuation
C	The attenuator has a low-pass filter to increase the strength of lower frequency signals
D	Signals are attenuated separately from the noise

19. - E4D06

What is the term for spurious signals generated by the combination of two or more signals in a non-linear device or circuit?

Select	Answer
A	Neutralization
B	Adjacent channel interference
C	Intermodulation
D	Amplifier desensitization

20. - E4E06

What is one type of electrical interference that might be caused by a nearby personal computer?

Select	Answer
A	The appearance of unstable modulated or unmodulated signals at specific frequencies
B	A loud AC hum in the audio output of your station receiver
C	A whining type noise that continually pulses off and on
D	A clicking noise at intervals of a few seconds

21. - E5A04

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

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

22. - E5B09

What is the relationship between the AC current through a capacitor and the voltage across a capacitor?

Select	Answer
A	Voltage leads current by 90 degrees
B	Voltage and current are in phase
C	Current leads voltage by 90 degrees
D	Voltage and current are 180 degrees out of phase

23. - E5C04

What coordinate system is often used to display the resistive, inductive, and/or capacitive reactance components of impedance?

Select	Answer
A	Faraday grid
B	Elliptical coordinates
C	Maidenhead grid
D	Rectangular coordinates

24. - E5D05

What is the power factor of an RL circuit having a 30-degree phase angle between the voltage and the current?

Select	Answer
A	0.5
B	1.73
C	0.577
D	0.866

25. - E6A02

Which of the following semiconductor materials contains excess free electrons?

Select	Answer
A	Bipolar
B	N-type
C	P-type
D	Insulated gate

26. - E6B03

What type of bias is required for an LED to emit light?

Select	Answer
A	Zero bias
B	Forward bias
C	Reverse bias
D	Inductive bias

27. - E6C07

What best describes a pull-up or pull-down resistor?

Select	Answer
A	A resistor connected to an op-amp output that prevents signals from exceeding the power supply voltage
B	A resistor connected to the positive or negative supply line used to establish a voltage when an input or output is an open circuit
C	A resistor in a keying circuit used to reduce key clicks
D	A resistor that ensures that an oscillator frequency does not drift

28. - E6D10

What is a primary advantage of using a toroidal core instead of a solenoidal core in an inductor?

Select	Answer
A	Toroidal cores confine most of the magnetic field within the core material
B	Toroidal cores exhibit greater hysteresis
C	Toroidal cores make it easier to couple the magnetic energy into other components
D	Toroidal cores have lower Q characteristics

29. - E6E05

Which of the following noise figure values is typical of a low-noise UHF preamplifier?

Select	Answer
A	-10 dB
B	44 dBm
C	-20 dBm
D	2 dB

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 digital encryption device often used to encrypt spacecraft control signals
C	A device for generating RTTY signals by means of a rotating light source
D	A device that detects rotation of a control by interrupting a light source with a patterned wheel

31. - E7A06

What is a characteristic of a monostable multivibrator?

Select	Answer
A	It switches momentarily to the opposite binary state and then returns to its original state after a set time
B	It maintains a constant output voltage, regardless of variations in the input voltage
C	It produces a continuous square wave oscillating between 1 and 0
D	It stores one bit of data in either a 0 or 1 state

32. - E7B11

In Figure E7-1, what is the purpose of R3?

Select	Answer
A	Fixed bias
B	Self bias
C	Output load resistor
D	Emitter bypass

33. - E7C04

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

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

34. - E7D13

What is the equation for calculating power dissipated by a series linear voltage regulator?

Select	Answer
A	Input voltage divided by output current
B	Input voltage multiplied by input current
C	Output voltage multiplied by output current
D	Voltage difference from input to output multiplied by output current

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	Two and four times the original frequency
C	The two input frequencies along with their sum and difference frequencies
D	1.414 and 0.707 times the input frequency

36. - E7F04

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

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

37. - E7G06

What is the gain-bandwidth of an operational amplifier?

Select	Answer
A	The frequency at which the open-loop gain of the amplifier equals one
B	The frequency at which the amplifier's offset voltage is zero
C	The maximum frequency for a filter circuit using that type of amplifier
D	The gain of the amplifier at a filter's cutoff frequency

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. - E8A07

What determines the PEP-to-average power ratio of a single-sideband phone signal?

Select	Answer
A	Speech characteristics
B	Amplifier gain
C	The frequency of the modulating signal
D	The degree of carrier suppression

40. - E8B01

What is the modulation index of an FM signal?

Select	Answer
A	The ratio of frequency deviation to modulating signal frequency
B	The ratio of modulating signal amplitude to frequency deviation
C	The bandwidth of the transmitted signal divided by the modulating signal frequency
D	The type of modulation used by the transmitter

41. - E8C07

What is the bandwidth of a 4800-Hz frequency shift, 9600-baud ASCII FM transmission?

Select	Answer
A	9.6 kHz
B	4.8 kHz
C	5.76 kHz
D	15.36 kHz

42. - E8D11

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

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

43. - E9A13

What term describes station output, taking into account all gains and losses?

Select	Answer
A	Power factor
B	Effective radiated power
C	Apparent power
D	Half-power bandwidth

44. - E9B02

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

Select	Answer
A	36 dB
B	24 dB
C	14 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	Fewer vertical angle lobes will be present
B	The low-angle radiation decreases
C	Additional higher vertical angle lobes will appear
D	The low-angle radiation increases

46. - E9D10

What happens to feed-point impedance at the base of a fixed length HF mobile antenna when operated below its resonant frequency?

Select	Answer
A	The radiation resistance decreases and the capacitive reactance decreases
B	The radiation resistance increases and the capacitive reactance increases
C	The radiation resistance decreases and the capacitive reactance increases
D	The radiation resistance increases and the capacitive reactance decreases

47. - E9E05

How must an antenna's driven element be tuned to use a hairpin matching system?

Select	Answer
A	The driven element resonance must be lower than the operating frequency
B	The driven element reactance must be inductive
C	The driven element reactance must be capacitive
D	The driven element radiation resistance must be higher than the characteristic impedance of the transmission line

48. - E9F09

What is the approximate physical length of a foam polyethylene dielectric coaxial transmission line that is electrically 1/4 wavelength long at 7.2 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	10.4 meters
B	8.3 meters
C	5.2 meters
D	6.9 meters

49. - E9G04

What are the two families of circles and arcs that make up a Smith chart?

Select	Answer
A	Resistance and reactance
B	Reactance and voltage
C	Voltage and impedance
D	Resistance and voltage

50. - E9H03

What is Receiving Directivity Factor (RDF)?

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

Figure E7-1

Figure E9-1