US Amateur Radio - Amateur Extra (Element 4, 2016-2020) Practice Test

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1. - E1A05

What is the maximum power output permitted on the 60 meter band?

Select	Answer
A	50 watts PEP effective radiated power relative to an isotropic radiator
B	100 watts PEP effective radiated power relative to an isotropic radiator
C	100 watts PEP effective radiated power relative to the gain of a half-wave dipole
D	50 watts PEP effective radiated power relative to a dipole

2. - E1B01

Which of the following constitutes a spurious emission?

Select	Answer
A	Any transmitted signal that unintentionally interferes with another licensed radio station
B	A signal transmitted to prevent its detection by any station other than the intended recipient
C	An amateur station transmission made at random without the proper call sign identification
D	An emission outside its necessary bandwidth that can be reduced or eliminated without affecting the information transmitted

3. - E1C04

What is meant by IARP?

Select	Answer
A	An international amateur radio permit that allows U.S. amateurs to operate in certain countries of the Americas
B	A forecast of intermittent aurora radio propagation
C	An indication of increased antenna reflected power
D	The internal amateur radio practices policy of the FCC

4. - E1D04

What is an Earth station in the amateur satellite service?

Select	Answer
A	An amateur station within 50 km of the Earth's surface intended for communications with amateur stations by means of objects in space
B	An amateur station that transmits telemetry consisting of measurement of upper atmosphere
C	Any amateur station on the surface of the Earth
D	An amateur station that is not able to communicate using amateur satellites

5. - E1E01

What is the minimum number of qualified VEs required to administer an Element 4 amateur operator license examination?

Select	Answer
A	3
B	5
C	4
D	2

6. - E1F04

Which of the following geographic descriptions approximately describes "Line A"?

Select	Answer
A	A line roughly parallel to and east of the U.S. Pacific coastline
B	A line roughly parallel to and north of the U.S.-Mexican border and Gulf coastline
C	A line roughly parallel to and west of the U.S. Atlantic coastline
D	A line roughly parallel to and south of the U.S.-Canadian border

7. - E2A14

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

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

8. - E2B15

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

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

9. - E2C01

Which of the following is true about contest operating?

Select	Answer
A	Every contest requires a signal report in the exchange
B	Operators are permitted to make contacts even if they do not submit a log
C	It is mandatory to transmit the call sign of the station being worked as part of every transmission to that station
D	Interference to other amateurs is unavoidable and therefore acceptable

10. - E2D05

Which of the following techniques is normally used by low Earth orbiting digital satellites to relay messages around the world?

Select	Answer
A	Digipeating
B	Node hopping
C	Multi-satellite relaying
D	Store-and-forward

11. - E2E08

Which of the following HF digital modes can be used to transfer binary files?

Select	Answer
A	PACTOR
B	RTTY
C	Hellschreiber
D	AMTOR

12. - E3A08

When a meteor strikes the Earth's atmosphere, a cylindrical region of free electrons is formed at what layer of the ionosphere?

Select	Answer
A	The E layer
B	The D layer
C	The F1 layer
D	The F2 layer

13. - E3B04

What is meant by the terms extraordinary and ordinary waves?

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

14. - E3C13

What type of polarization is best for ground-wave propagation?

Select	Answer
A	Circular
B	Vertical
C	Horizontal
D	Elliptical

15. - E4A06

What is the effect of aliasing in a digital or computer-based oscilloscope?

Select	Answer
A	False signals are displayed
B	All signals will have a DC offset
C	Calibration of the vertical scale is no longer valid
D	False triggering occurs

16. - E4B13

Which S parameter is equivalent to forward gain?

Select	Answer
A	S11
B	S12
C	S22
D	S21

17. - E4C11

Which of the following is a desirable amount of selectivity for an amateur SSB phone receiver?

Select	Answer
A	1 kHz
B	2.4 kHz
C	4.2 kHz
D	4.8 kHz

18. - E4D01

What is meant by the blocking dynamic range of a receiver?

Select	Answer
A	The difference in dB between the noise floor and the level of an incoming signal which will cause 1 dB of gain compression
B	The minimum difference in dB between two signals which produce third order intermodulation products greater than the noise floor
C	The minimum difference in dB between the levels of two FM signals which will cause one signal to block the other
D	The difference in dB between the noise floor and the third order intercept point

19. - E4E05

How can noise from an electric motor be suppressed?

Select	Answer
A	By installing a bypass capacitor 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 brute-force AC-line filter in series with the motor leads

20. - E5A05

What is the magnitude of the current at the input of a series RLC circuit as the frequency goes through resonance?

Select	Answer
A	L/R
B	Minimum
C	R/L
D	Maximum

21. - 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	68.2 degrees with the voltage leading the current
D	14.0 degrees with the voltage lagging the current

22. - E5C13

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

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

23. - E5D17

How many watts are consumed in a circuit having a power factor of 0.6 if the input is 200VAC at 5 amperes?

Select	Answer
A	200 watts
B	1600 watts
C	600 watts
D	1000 watts

24. - E6A17

What are the names of the three terminals of a field-effect transistor?

Select	Answer
A	Gate, drain, source
B	Emitter, base 1, base 2
C	Gate 1, gate 2, drain
D	Emitter, base, collector

25. - E6B04

What type of semiconductor device is designed for use as a voltage-controlled capacitor?

Select	Answer
A	Tunnel diode
B	Silicon-controlled rectifier
C	Varactor diode
D	Zener diode

26. - E6C04

What is the primary advantage of tri-state logic?

Select	Answer
A	More efficient arithmetic operations
B	High speed operation
C	Low power consumption
D	Ability to connect many device outputs to a common bus

27. - 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 have lower initial permeability
C	Ferrite toroids generally require fewer turns to produce a given inductance value
D	Ferrite toroids generally have better temperature stability

28. - E6E09

Which of the following component package types would be most suitable for use at frequencies above the HF range?

Select	Answer
A	TO-220
B	Radial lead
C	Axial lead
D	Surface mount

29. - E6F08

Why are optoisolators often used in conjunction with solid state circuits when switching 120VAC?

Select	Answer
A	Optoisolators eliminate the effects of reflected light in the control circuit
B	Optoisolators provide a low impedance link between a control circuit and a power circuit
C	Optoisolators provide impedance matching between the control circuit and power circuit
D	Optoisolators provide a very high degree of electrical isolation between a control circuit and the circuit being switched

30. - E7A09

What logical operation is performed by an exclusive NOR gate?

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

31. - E7B08

How can an RF power amplifier be neutralized?

Select	Answer
A	By increasing the driving power
B	By reducing the driving power
C	By feeding an in-phase component of the output back to the input
D	By feeding a 180-degree out-of-phase portion of the output back to the input

32. - E7C03

What advantage does a Pi-L-network have over a regular Pi-network for impedance matching between the final amplifier of a vacuum-tube transmitter and an antenna?

Select	Answer
A	Lower losses
B	Higher efficiency
C	Greater harmonic suppression
D	Greater transformation range

33. - E7D02

What is one characteristic of a switching electronic voltage regulator?

Select	Answer
A	It gives a ramp voltage at its output
B	The resistance of a control element is varied in direct proportion to the line voltage or load current
C	It is generally less efficient than a linear regulator
D	The controlled device's duty cycle is changed to produce a constant average output voltage

34. - E7E05

What circuit is added to an FM transmitter to boost the higher audio frequencies?

Select	Answer
A	A de-emphasis network
B	A pre-emphasis network
C	An audio prescaler
D	A heterodyne suppressor

35. - E7F01

What is meant by direct digital conversion as applied to software defined radios?

Select	Answer
A	Incoming RF is digitized by an analog-to-digital converter without being mixed with a local oscillator signal
B	Software is converted from source code to object code during operation of the receiver
C	A switching mixer is used to generate I and Q signals directly from the RF input
D	Incoming RF is converted to a control voltage for a voltage controlled oscillator

36. - E7G08

How does the gain of an ideal operational amplifier vary with frequency?

Select	Answer
A	It increases linearly with increasing frequency
B	It does not vary with frequency
C	It decreases linearly with increasing frequency
D	It decreases logarithmically with increasing frequency

37. - E7H04

How is positive feedback supplied in a Colpitts oscillator?

Select	Answer
A	Through a capacitive divider
B	Through a neutralizing capacitor
C	Through a tapped coil
D	Through link coupling

38. - E8A03

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

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

39. - E8B06

What is the deviation ratio of an FM-phone signal having a maximum frequency swing of plus or minus 7.5 kHz when the maximum modulation frequency is 3.5 kHz?

Select	Answer
A	2.14
B	0.47
C	0.214
D	47

40. - E8C04

What technique is used to minimize the bandwidth requirements 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

41. - E8D08

What parameter might indicate that excessively high input levels are causing distortion in an AFSK signal?

Select	Answer
A	Signal to noise ratio
B	Intermodulation Distortion (IMD)
C	Repeat Request Rate (RRR)
D	Baud rate

42. - 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

43. - E9B05

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

Select	Answer
A	Elevation
B	Azimuth
C	Polarization
D	Radiation resistance

44. - E9C04

What happens to the radiation pattern of an unterminated long wire antenna as the wire length is increased?

Select	Answer
A	The lobes become more perpendicular to the wire
B	The vertical angle increases
C	The front-to-back ratio decreases
D	The lobes align more in the direction of the wire

45. - 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 cancel capacitive reactance
D	To lower the Q

46. - E9E04

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

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

47. - E9F11

What impedance does a 1/8 wavelength transmission line present to a generator when the line is open at the far end?

Select	Answer
A	The same as the input impedance of the final generator stage
B	A capacitive reactance
C	The same as the characteristic impedance of the line
D	An inductive reactance

48. - E9G09

What third family of circles is often added to a Smith chart during the process of solving problems?

Select	Answer
A	Standing wave ratio circles
B	Radiation-pattern circles
C	Coaxial-length circles
D	Antenna-length circles

49. - E9H06

What is the triangulation method of direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	A fixed receiving station plots three headings to the signal source
B	The geometric angles of sky waves from the source are used to determine its position
C	Antenna headings from several different receiving locations are used to locate the signal source
D	A fixed receiving station uses three different antennas to plot the location of the signal source

50. - E0A01

What is the primary function of an external earth connection or ground rod?

Select	Answer
A	Lightning protection
B	Reduce RFI to telephones and home entertainment systems
C	Reduce received noise
D	Reduce RF current flow between pieces of equipment

Figure E9-2