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

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1. - E1A11

Which of the following describes authorization or licensing required when operating an amateur station aboard a U.S.-registered vessel in international waters?

Select	Answer
A	Any FCC-issued amateur license
B	Only General class or higher amateur licenses
C	An unrestricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit
D	Any amateur license with an FCC Marine or Aircraft endorsement

2. - E1B04

What must be done before placing an amateur station within an officially designated wilderness area or wildlife preserve, or an area listed in the National Register of Historical Places?

Select	Answer
A	A form FSD-15 must be submitted to the Department of the Interior
B	An Environmental Assessment must be submitted to the FCC
C	A proposal must be submitted to the National Park Service
D	A letter of intent must be filed with the National Audubon Society

3. - E1C02

What is meant by automatic control of a station?

Select	Answer
A	A station operating with its output power controlled automatically
B	Remotely controlling a station's antenna pattern through a directional control link
C	The use of a control link between a control point and a locally controlled station
D	The use of devices and procedures for control so that the control operator does not have to be present at a control point

4. - E1D07

Which amateur service HF bands have frequencies authorized for space stations?

Select	Answer
A	Only the 40 m, 30 m, 20 m, 15 m, 12 m and 10 m bands
B	All HF bands
C	Only the 40 m, 20 m, 17 m, 15 m and 10 m bands
D	Only the 40 m, 20 m, 17 m, 15 m, 12 m and 10 m bands

5. - E1E08

To which of the following examinees may a VE not administer an examination?

Select	Answer
A	Relatives of the VE as listed in the FCC rules
B	Employees of the VE
C	All of these choices are correct
D	Friends of the VE

6. - 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 be capable of external RF switching between its input and output networks
B	It must produce full legal output when driven by not more than 5 watts of mean RF input power
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

7. - E2A10

Why may the received signal from an amateur satellite exhibit a rapidly repeating fading effect?

Select	Answer
A	Because of ionospheric absorption
B	Because the satellite is spinning
C	Because of the Doppler Effect
D	Because of the satellite's low orbital altitude

8. - E2B02

How many horizontal lines make up a fast-scan (NTSC) television frame?

Select	Answer
A	60
B	525
C	30
D	1080

9. - E2C08

Which of the following contacts may be confirmed through the U.S. QSL bureau system?

Select	Answer
A	Contacts using tactical call signs
B	Contacts between a U.S. station and a non-U.S. station
C	Repeater contacts between U.S. club members
D	Special event contacts between stations in the U.S.

10. - E2D08

What type of packet frame is used to transmit APRS beacon data?

Select	Answer
A	Unnumbered Information
B	Acknowledgement
C	Disconnect
D	Connect

11. - E2E01

Which type of modulation is common for data emissions below 30 MHz?

Select	Answer
A	FSK
B	DTMF tones modulating an FM signal
C	Pulse modulation
D	Spread spectrum

12. - E3A17

What is meant by circularly polarized electromagnetic waves?

Select	Answer
A	Waves with an electric field bent into a circular shape
B	Waves that circle the Earth
C	Waves produced by a loop antenna
D	Waves with a rotating electric field

13. - E3B14

What happens to linearly polarized radio waves that split into ordinary and extraordinary waves in the ionosphere?

Select	Answer
A	They are bent toward the magnetic poles
B	Their polarization is randomly modified
C	They become elliptically polarized
D	They become phase-locked

14. - E3C06

By how much does the VHF/UHF radio horizon distance exceed the geometric horizon?

Select	Answer
A	By approximately twice the distance
B	By approximately 15 percent of the distance
C	By approximately four times the distance
D	By approximately 50 percent of the distance

15. - E4A05

What might be an advantage of a digital vs an analog oscilloscope?

Select	Answer
A	Manipulation of time base after trace capture
B	All of these choices are correct
C	Automatic amplitude and frequency numerical readout
D	Storage of traces for future reference

16. - E4B14

What happens if a dip meter is too tightly coupled to a tuned circuit being checked?

Select	Answer
A	A less accurate reading results
B	Harmonics are generated
C	Intermodulation distortion occurs
D	Cross modulation occurs

17. - E4C15

What is usually the primary source of noise that is heard from an HF receiver with an antenna connected?

Select	Answer
A	Atmospheric noise
B	Induction motor noise
C	Detector noise
D	Receiver front-end noise

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

19. - E4E15

Which of the following can cause shielded cables to radiate or receive interference?

Select	Answer
A	Use of braided shielding material
B	Common mode currents on the shield and conductors
C	Tying all ground connections to a common point resulting in differential mode currents in the shield
D	Low inductance ground connections at both ends of the shield

20. - E5A01

What can cause the voltage across reactances in series to be larger than the voltage applied to them?

Select	Answer
A	Capacitance
B	Conductance
C	Resistance
D	Resonance

21. - E5B05

What happens to the magnitude of a reactance when it is converted to a susceptance?

Select	Answer
A	The sign is reversed
B	It is shifted by 90 degrees
C	It is unchanged
D	The magnitude of the susceptance is the reciprocal of the magnitude of the reactance

22. - E5C11

What do the two numbers that are used to define a point on a graph using rectangular coordinates represent?

Select	Answer
A	The tangent and cotangent values
B	The magnitude and phase of the point
C	The coordinate values along the horizontal and vertical axes
D	The sine and cosine values

23. - E5D14

What is reactive power?

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

24. - E6A02

Which of the following semiconductor materials contains excess free electrons?

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

25. - E6B08

Which of the following describes a type of semiconductor diode?

Select	Answer
A	Electrolytic rectifier
B	Thermionic emission diode
C	CMOS-field effect
D	Metal-semiconductor junction

26. - E6C08

In Figure E6-5, what is the schematic symbol for a NAND gate?

Select	Answer
A	1
B	2
C	3
D	4

27. - E6D10

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

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

28. - E6E12

Why are high-power RF amplifier ICs and transistors sometimes mounted in ceramic packages?

Select	Answer
A	To provide a low-pass frequency response
B	Better dissipation of heat
C	Enhanced sensitivity to light
D	High-voltage insulating ability

29. - E6F02

What happens to the conductivity of a photoconductive material when light shines on it?

Select	Answer
A	It stays the same
B	It decreases
C	It increases
D	It becomes unstable

30. - E7A08

What logical operation does an OR gate perform?

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

31. - E7B13

In Figure E7-2, what is the purpose of R?

Select	Answer
A	Voltage regulation
B	Emitter load
C	Fixed bias
D	Collector load

32. - E7C07

What kind of filter would you use to attenuate an interfering carrier signal while receiving an SSB transmission?

Select	Answer
A	An all-pass filter
B	A band-pass filter
C	A Pi-network filter
D	A notch filter

33. - E7D16

When several electrolytic filter capacitors are connected in series to increase the operating voltage of a power supply filter circuit, why should resistors be connected across each capacitor?

Select	Answer
A	To equalize, as much as possible, the voltage drop across each capacitor
B	To provide a safety bleeder to discharge the capacitors when the supply is off
C	To provide a minimum load current to reduce voltage excursions at light loads
D	All of these choices are correct

34. - E7E11

Which type of detector is used for demodulating SSB signals?

Select	Answer
A	Discriminator
B	Phase comparator
C	Product detector
D	Phase detector

35. - E7F02

What kind of digital signal processing audio filter is used to remove unwanted noise from a received SSB signal?

Select	Answer
A	An adaptive filter
B	A crystal-lattice filter
C	A phase-inverting filter
D	A Hilbert-transform filter

36. - E7G03

What is the typical input impedance of an integrated circuit op-amp?

Select	Answer
A	Very low
B	100 ohms
C	1000 ohms
D	Very high

37. - E7H01

What are three oscillator circuits used in Amateur Radio equipment?

Select	Answer
A	Pierce, Fenner and Beane
B	Taft, Hartley and Pierce
C	Colpitts, Hartley and Pierce
D	Taft, Pierce and negative feedback

38. - E8A04

What is "dither" with respect to analog to digital converters?

Select	Answer
A	A method of decimation by randomly skipping samples
B	An abnormal condition where the converter cannot settle on a value to represent the signal
C	A small amount of noise added to the input signal to allow more precise representation of a signal over time
D	An error caused by irregular quantization step size

39. - E8B05

What is the deviation ratio of an FM-phone signal having a maximum frequency swing of plus-or-minus 5 kHz when the maximum modulation frequency is 3 kHz?

Select	Answer
A	0.167
B	0.6
C	60
D	1.67

40. - E8C11

What is the relationship between symbol rate and baud?

Select	Answer
A	They are the same
B	Baud is only used for RTTY
C	Baud is twice the symbol rate
D	Symbol rate is only used for packet-based modes

41. - E8D08

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

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

42. - E9A11

Which of the following factors determines ground losses for a ground-mounted vertical antenna operating in the 3 MHz to 30 MHz range?

Select	Answer
A	Soil conductivity
B	Distance from the transmitter
C	The standing wave ratio
D	Take-off angle

43. - E9B12

What is the far field of an antenna?

Select	Answer
A	The region where radiated field strengths are obstructed by objects of reflection
B	The region of the ionosphere where radiated power is not refracted
C	The region where the shape of the antenna pattern is independent of distance
D	The region where radiated power dissipates over a specified time period

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

45. - E9D01

How does the gain of an ideal parabolic dish antenna change when the operating frequency is doubled?

Select	Answer
A	Gain does not change
B	Gain increases by 3 dB
C	Gain increases by 6 dB
D	Gain is multiplied by 0.707

46. - E9E07

What term best describes the interactions at the load end of a mismatched transmission line?

Select	Answer
A	Velocity factor
B	Characteristic impedance
C	Reflection coefficient
D	Dielectric constant

47. - E9F10

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

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

48. - E9G07

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

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

49. - E9H11

What characteristic of a cardioid pattern antenna is useful for direction finding?

Select	Answer
A	Broad band response
B	High-radiation angle
C	A very sharp single null
D	A very sharp peak

50. - E0A02

When evaluating RF exposure levels from your station at a neighbor's home, what must you do?

Select	Answer
A	Make sure signals from your station are less than the controlled MPE limits
B	Advise your neighbors of the results of your tests
C	Make sure signals from your station are less than the uncontrolled MPE limits
D	You need only evaluate exposure levels on your own property

Figure E6-5

Figure E7-2

Figure E9-3