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

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1. - E0A08

What does SAR measure?

Select	Answer
A	Signal Amplification Rating
B	Synthetic Aperture Ratio of the human body
C	The rate at which RF energy is absorbed by the body
D	The rate of RF energy reflected from stationary terrain

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	Any person named in an amateur station license grant or a person holding an unrestricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit
B	Only a person with an FCC Marine Radio license grant
C	Only a person named in an amateur station license grant
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	Homeowners associations
B	FAA tower height limits
C	State and local zoning
D	Use of wireless devices in vehicles

4. - E1C11

Which of the following operating arrangements allows an FCC-licensed U.S. citizen to operate in many European countries, and alien amateurs from many European countries to operate in the U.S.?

Select	Answer
A	ITU reciprocal license
B	All these choices are correct
C	CEPT agreement
D	IARP agreement

5. - E1D06

What is the maximum permitted transmitter output power when operating a model craft by telecommand?

Select	Answer
A	1 watt
B	100 watts
C	5 watts
D	2 watts

6. - E1E12

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

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

7. - E1F06

Under what circumstances might the FCC issue a Special Temporary Authority (STA) to an amateur station?

Select	Answer
A	To provide temporary operation while awaiting normal licensing
B	To provide additional spectrum for personal use
C	To allow regular operation on Land Mobile channels
D	To provide for experimental amateur communications

8. - E2A06

What are Keplerian elements?

Select	Answer
A	High-emission heater filaments used in magnetron tubes
B	Encrypting codes used for spread spectrum modulation
C	Phase reversing elements in a Yagi antenna
D	Parameters that define the orbit of a satellite

9. - E2B01

How many times per second is a new frame transmitted in a fast-scan (NTSC) television system?

Select	Answer
A	120
B	30
C	60
D	90

10. - E2C04

Which of the following frequencies are sometimes used for amateur radio mesh networks?

Select	Answer
A	The 60 meter band channel centered on 5373 kHz
B	HF frequencies where digital communications are permitted
C	Frequencies shared with various unlicensed wireless data services
D	Cable TV channels 41 through 43

11. - E2D02

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

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

12. - E2E13

Which of these digital modes has the fastest data throughput under clear communication conditions?

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

13. - E3A13

Which of these emission modes is best for auroral propagation?

Select	Answer
A	CW
B	FM
C	RTTY
D	SSB

14. - E3B02

What is the approximate maximum range for signals using transequatorial propagation?

Select	Answer
A	5000 miles
B	7500 miles
C	2500 miles
D	1000 miles

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	Westward
B	Eastward
C	Southward
D	Northward

16. - E4A09

Which of the following is good practice when using an oscilloscope probe?

Select	Answer
A	Never use a high-impedance probe to measure a low-impedance circuit
B	Never use a DC-coupled probe to measure an AC circuit
C	All these choices are correct
D	Keep the signal ground connection of the probe as short as possible

17. - E4B05

What three test loads are used to calibrate an RF vector network analyzer?

Select	Answer
A	50 ohms, 75 ohms, and 90 ohms
B	Short circuit, open circuit, and 50 ohms
C	Short circuit, open circuit, and resonant circuit
D	50 ohms through 1/8 wavelength, 1/4 wavelength, and 1/2 wavelength of coaxial cable

18. - E4C13

How does a narrow-band roofing filter affect receiver performance?

Select	Answer
A	It improves dynamic range by attenuating strong signals near the receive frequency
B	It improves intelligibility by using low Q circuitry to reduce ringing
C	It improves sensitivity by reducing front end noise
D	All these choices are correct

19. - E4D02

Which of the following describes problems caused by poor dynamic range in a receiver?

Select	Answer
A	Cross-modulation of the desired signal and insufficient audio power to operate the speaker
B	Oscillator instability and severe audio distortion of all but the strongest received signals
C	Oscillator instability requiring frequent retuning and loss of ability to recover the opposite sideband
D	Spurious signals caused by cross-modulation and desensitization from strong adjacent signals

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 installing a high-pass filter in series with the motor's power leads
C	By using a ground-fault current interrupter in the circuit used to power the motor
D	By installing a bypass capacitor in series with the motor leads

21. - E5A11

What is the half-power bandwidth of a resonant circuit that has a resonant frequency of 7.1 MHz and a Q of 150?

Select	Answer
A	315.6 Hz
B	47.3 kHz
C	157.8 Hz
D	23.67 kHz

22. - E5B12

What is admittance?

Select	Answer
A	The term for the gain of a field effect transistor
B	The inverse of impedance
C	The inverse of Q factor
D	The turns ratio of a transformer

23. - E5C11

Which point in Figure E5-1 best represents the impedance of a series circuit consisting of a 300-ohm resistor and an 18-microhenry inductor at 3.505 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	Point 1
B	Point 8
C	Point 7
D	Point 3

24. - E5D12

How many watts are consumed in a circuit having a power factor of 0.2 if the input is 100 VAC at 4 amperes?

Select	Answer
A	80 watts
B	50 watts
C	400 watts
D	2000 watts

25. - E6A04

What is the name given to an impurity atom that adds holes to a semiconductor crystal structure?

Select	Answer
A	Insulator impurity
B	Donor impurity
C	Acceptor impurity
D	N-type impurity

26. - E6B08

Which of the following is a Schottky barrier diode?

Select	Answer
A	Metal-semiconductor junction
B	Electrolytic rectifier
C	Thermionic emission diode
D	PIN junction

27. - E6C10

In Figure E6-3, what is the schematic symbol for a NOR gate?

Select	Answer
A	2
B	3
C	1
D	4

28. - E6D01

Why should core saturation of an impedance matching transformer be avoided?

Select	Answer
A	Temporary changes of the core permeability could result
B	Harmonics and distortion could result
C	RF susceptance would increase
D	Magnetic flux would increase with frequency

29. - E6E12

Why are DIP through-hole package ICs not typically used at UHF and higher frequencies?

Select	Answer
A	Excessive lead length
B	Epoxy coating is conductive above 300 MHz
C	Too many pins
D	Unsuitable for combining analog and digital signals

30. - E6F06

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

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

31. - E7A10

What is a truth table?

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

32. - E7B02

What is a Class D amplifier?

Select	Answer
A	A type of amplifier that uses switching technology to achieve high efficiency
B	An amplifier that uses drift-mode FETs for high efficiency
C	A low power amplifier that uses a differential amplifier for improved linearity
D	A frequency doubling amplifier

33. - E7C10

Which of the following filters would be the best choice for use in a 2 meter band repeater duplexer?

Select	Answer
A	A DSP filter
B	An L-C filter
C	A cavity filter
D	A crystal filter

34. - E7D01

How does a linear electronic voltage regulator work?

Select	Answer
A	The conduction of a control element is varied to maintain a constant output voltage
B	It has a ramp voltage as its output
C	It eliminates the need for a pass transistor
D	The control element duty cycle is proportional to the line or load conditions

35. - E7E03

What is a frequency discriminator stage in a FM receiver?

Select	Answer
A	A circuit for detecting FM signals
B	An automatic band-switching circuit
C	A circuit for filtering two closely adjacent signals
D	An FM generator circuit

36. - E7F08

What is the function of decimation?

Select	Answer
A	Attenuating the signal
B	Removing unnecessary significant digits
C	Converting data to binary code decimal form
D	Reducing the effective sample rate by removing samples

37. - E7G09

What will be the output voltage of the circuit shown in Figure E7-3 if R1 is 1000 ohms, RF is 10,000 ohms, and 0.23 volts DC is applied to the input?

Select	Answer
A	-0.23 volts
B	0.23 volts
C	2.3 volts
D	-2.3 volts

38. - E7H05

How is positive feedback supplied in a Pierce oscillator?

Select	Answer
A	Through a quartz crystal
B	Through link coupling
C	Through a tapped coil
D	Through a neutralizing capacitor

39. - E8A08

Why would a direct or flash conversion analog-to-digital converter be useful for a software defined radio?

Select	Answer
A	Very low power consumption decreases frequency drift
B	Very high speed allows digitizing high frequencies
C	All these choices are correct
D	Immunity to out-of-sequence coding reduces spurious responses

40. - E8B11

What is digital time division multiplexing?

Select	Answer
A	Two or more data streams share the same channel by transmitting time of transmission as the sub-carrier
B	Two or more data streams are assigned to discrete sub-carriers on an FM transmitter
C	Two or more signals are arranged to share discrete time slots of a data transmission
D	Two or more signals are quadrature modulated to increase bandwidth efficiency

41. - E8C04

What technique minimizes the bandwidth of a PSK31 signal?

Select	Answer
A	Use of trapezoidal data pulses
B	Reed-Solomon character encoding
C	Zero-sum character encoding
D	Use of sinusoidal data pulses

42. - E8D11

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

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

43. - E9A08

What is antenna bandwidth?

Select	Answer
A	Antenna length divided by the number of elements
B	The angle between the half-power radiation points
C	The angle formed between two imaginary lines drawn through the element ends
D	The frequency range over which an antenna satisfies a performance requirement

44. - E9B04

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

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

45. - E9C13

How does the radiation pattern of a horizontally polarized 3-element beam antenna vary with increasing height above ground?

Select	Answer
A	The takeoff angle of the lowest elevation lobe increases
B	The horizontal beamwidth decreases
C	The takeoff angle of the lowest elevation lobe decreases
D	The horizontal beamwidth increases

46. - E9D02

How can linearly polarized Yagi antennas be used to produce circular polarization?

Select	Answer
A	Stack two Yagis fed 90 degrees out of phase to form an array with the respective elements in parallel planes
B	Arrange two Yagis perpendicular to each other with the driven elements at the same point on the boom fed 90 degrees out of phase
C	Stack two Yagis fed in phase to form an array with the respective elements in parallel planes
D	Arrange two Yagis collinear to each other with the driven elements fed 180 degrees out of phase

47. - E9E08

What is a use for a Wilkinson divider?

Select	Answer
A	It is used to divide power equally between two 50-ohm loads while maintaining 50-ohm input impedance
B	It is used to feed high-impedance antennas from a low-impedance source
C	It divides the operating frequency of a transmitter signal so it can be used on a lower frequency band
D	It is used to feed low-impedance loads from a high-impedance source

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	8.3 meters
B	10.4 meters
C	6.9 meters
D	5.2 meters

49. - E9G07

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

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

50. - E9H11

What feature of a cardioid pattern antenna makes it useful for direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	Broadband response
B	High radiation angle
C	A very sharp single null
D	A very sharp peak

Figure E5-1

Figure E6-3

Figure E7-3

Figure E9-3