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

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1. - E1A09

What is the first action you should take if your digital message forwarding station inadvertently forwards a communication that violates FCC rules?

Select	Answer
A	Notify the originating station that the communication does not comply with FCC rules
B	Discontinue forwarding the communication as soon as you become aware of it
C	Notify the nearest FCC Field Engineer's office
D	Discontinue forwarding all messages

2. - E1B09

Which amateur stations may be operated under RACES rules?

Select	Answer
A	Only those club stations licensed to Amateur Extra class operators
B	Any FCC-licensed amateur station participating in the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS)
C	Any FCC-licensed amateur station certified by the responsible civil defense organization for the area served
D	Any FCC-licensed amateur station except a Technician class

3. - E1C04

What is meant by IARP?

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

4. - E1D07

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

Select	Answer
A	Only the 40 m, 20 m, 17 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, 30 m, 20 m, 15 m, 12 m and 10 m bands

5. - E1E10

What must the administering VEs do after the administration of a successful examination for an amateur operator license?

Select	Answer
A	They must collect and submit the documents to the coordinating VEC for grading
B	They must collect and send the documents to the FCC according to instructions
C	They must collect and send the documents to the NCVEC for grading
D	They must submit the application document to the coordinating VEC according to the coordinating VEC instructions

6. - E1F04

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

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

7. - E2A05

What do the letters in a satellite's mode designator specify?

Select	Answer
A	The polarization of uplink and downlink signals
B	The location of the ground control station
C	Power limits for uplink and downlink transmissions
D	The uplink and downlink frequency ranges

8. - E2B17

What is the approximate bandwidth of a slow-scan TV signal?

Select	Answer
A	2 MHz
B	3 kHz
C	600 Hz
D	6 MHz

9. - E2C04

What type of transmission is most often used for a ham radio mesh network?

Select	Answer
A	Frequency division multiplex in the 24 GHz band
B	Multiple Frequency Shift Keying in the 10 GHz band
C	Store and forward on the 440 MHz band
D	Spread spectrum in the 2.4 GHz band

10. - E2D09

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

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

11. - E2E06

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

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

12. - E3A05

Tropospheric propagation of microwave signals often occurs along what weather related structure?

Select	Answer
A	Warm and cold fronts
B	Lightning discharges
C	Gray-line
D	Sprites and jets

13. - E3B10

What is the cause of gray-line propagation?

Select	Answer
A	At midday, the Sun super heats the ionosphere causing increased refraction of radio waves
B	At mid-afternoon, the Sun heats the ionosphere decreasing radio wave refraction and the MUF
C	At twilight and sunrise, D-layer absorption is low while E-layer and F-layer propagation remains high
D	In darkness, solar absorption drops greatly while atmospheric ionization remains steady

14. - E3C09

How does the intensity of an X3 flare compare to that of an X2 flare?

Select	Answer
A	50 percent greater
B	Four times as great
C	Twice as great
D	10 percent greater

15. - E4A11

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

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

16. - E4B06

How much power is being absorbed by the load when a directional power meter connected between a transmitter and a terminating load reads 100 watts forward power and 25 watts reflected power?

Select	Answer
A	25 watts
B	100 watts
C	125 watts
D	75 watts

17. - E4C11

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

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

18. - E4D02

Which of the following describes two problems caused by poor dynamic range in a communications 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	Cross-modulation of the desired signal and desensitization from strong adjacent signals
D	Oscillator instability requiring frequent retuning and loss of ability to recover the opposite sideband

19. - E4E14

What is one type of electrical interference that might be caused by the operation of 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 clicking noise at intervals of a few seconds
D	A whining type noise that continually pulses off and on

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	Resistance
C	Resonance
D	Conductance

21. - E5B11

What is the phase angle between the voltage across and the current through a series RLC circuit if XC is 25 ohms, R is 100 ohms, and XL is 50 ohms?

Select	Answer
A	14 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
B	76 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
C	14 degrees with the voltage leading the current
D	76 degrees with the voltage leading the current

22. - E5C10

When using rectangular coordinates to graph the impedance of a circuit, what does the vertical axis represent?

Select	Answer
A	Resistive component
B	The difference between the resistive and reactive components
C	The sum of the reactive and resistive components
D	Reactive component

23. - E5D05

Which parasitic characteristic increases with conductor length?

Select	Answer
A	Permittivity
B	Permeability
C	Inductance
D	Malleability

24. - E6A16

What are the majority charge carriers in N-type semiconductor material?

Select	Answer
A	Free neutrons
B	Free protons
C	Holes
D	Free electrons

25. - E6B05

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

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

26. - E6C11

In Figure E6-5, what is the schematic symbol for the NOT operation (inverter)?

Select	Answer
A	5
B	6
C	4
D	2

27. - E6D05

What is one reason for using ferrite cores rather than powdered-iron in an inductor?

Select	Answer
A	Ferrite toroids generally have lower initial permeability
B	Ferrite toroids are easier to use with surface mount technology
C	Ferrite toroids generally have better temperature stability
D	Ferrite toroids generally require fewer turns to produce a given inductance value

28. - E6E02

Which of the following device packages is a through-hole type?

Select	Answer
A	Ball grid array
B	DIP
C	SOT
D	PLCC

29. - E6F06

Which of these materials is affected the most by photoconductivity?

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

30. - E7A12

What type of logic defines "0" as a high voltage?

Select	Answer
A	Positive Logic
B	Negative logic
C	Reverse Logic
D	Assertive Logic

31. - E7B11

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

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

32. - E7C13

What is one advantage of a Pi-matching network over an L-matching network consisting of a single inductor and a single capacitor?

Select	Answer
A	Pi-networks are designed for balanced input and output
B	L-networks cannot perform impedance transformation
C	The Q of Pi-networks can be varied depending on the component values chosen
D	Pi-networks have fewer components

33. - E7D05

Which of the following types of linear voltage regulator places a constant load on the unregulated voltage source?

Select	Answer
A	A series regulator
B	A shunt current source
C	A constant current source
D	A shunt regulator

34. - E7E02

What is the function of a reactance modulator?

Select	Answer
A	To produce PM signals by using an electrically variable resistance
B	To produce PM signals by using an electrically variable inductance or capacitance
C	To produce AM signals by using an electrically variable inductance or capacitance
D	To produce AM signals by using an electrically variable resistance

35. - E7F16

How might the sampling rate of an existing digital signal be adjusted by a factor of 3/4?

Select	Answer
A	Interpolate by a factor of three, then decimate by a factor of four
B	Multiply each sample value by a factor of 3/4
C	Add 3 to each input value and subtract 4 from each output value
D	Change the gain by a factor of 3/4

36. - E7G10

What absolute voltage gain can be expected from the circuit in Figure E7-4 when R1 is 1800 ohms and RF is 68 kilohms?

Select	Answer
A	0.03
B	76
C	1
D	38

37. - E7H11

What are the major spectral impurity components of direct digital synthesizers?

Select	Answer
A	Digital conversion noise
B	Nyquist limit noise
C	Spurious signals at discrete frequencies
D	Broadband noise

38. - E8A04

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

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

39. - E8B11

What is digital time division multiplexing?

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

40. - E8C02

What is the definition of symbol rate in a digital transmission?

Select	Answer
A	The number of characters carried per second by the station-to-station link
B	The duration of each bit in a message sent over the air
C	The rate at which the waveform of a transmitted signal changes to convey information
D	The number of control characters in a message packet

41. - E8D07

What is a common cause of overmodulation of AFSK signals?

Select	Answer
A	Excessive numbers of retries
B	Ground loops
C	Excessive transmit audio levels
D	Bit errors in the modem

42. - E9A18

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

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

43. - E9B08

How can the approximate beam-width in a given plane of a directional antenna be determined?

Select	Answer
A	Measure the ratio of the signal strengths of the radiated power lobes from the front and side of the antenna
B	Draw two imaginary lines through the ends of the elements and measure the angle between the lines
C	Note the two points where the signal strength of the antenna is 3 dB less than maximum and compute the angular difference
D	Measure the ratio of the signal strengths of the radiated power lobes from the front and rear of the antenna

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

45. - E9D12

Which of the following would provide the best RF ground for your station?

Select	Answer
A	An electrically short connection to 3 or 4 interconnected ground rods via a series RF choke
B	A 50 ohm resistor connected to ground
C	An electrically short connection to 3 or 4 interconnected ground rods driven into the Earth
D	An electrically short connection to a metal water pipe

46. - E9E08

Which of the following measurements is characteristic of a mismatched transmission line?

Select	Answer
A	A dielectric constant greater than 1
B	An SWR less than 1:1
C	A reflection coefficient greater than 1
D	An SWR greater than 1:1

47. - E9F04

What is the typical velocity factor for a coaxial cable with solid polyethylene dielectric?

Select	Answer
A	0.66
B	2.70
C	0.30
D	0.10

48. - E9G05

What type of chart is shown in Figure E9-3?

Select	Answer
A	Smith chart
B	Free space radiation directivity chart
C	Elevation angle radiation pattern chart
D	Azimuth angle radiation pattern chart

49. - E9H10

How can the output voltage of a multiple turn receiving loop antenna be increased?

Select	Answer
A	By reducing the permeability of the loop shield
B	By increasing either the number of wire turns in the loop or the area of the loop structure or both
C	By winding adjacent turns in opposing directions
D	By increasing the number of wire turns in the loop and reducing the area of the loop structure

50. - E0A04

When evaluating a site with multiple transmitters operating at the same time, the operators and licensees of which transmitters are responsible for mitigating over-exposure situations?

Select	Answer
A	Only the most powerful transmitter
B	Each transmitter that produces 5 percent or more of its MPE limit at accessible locations
C	Only commercial transmitters
D	Each transmitter operating with a duty-cycle greater than 50 percent

Figure E6-5

Figure E7-1

Figure E7-4

Figure E9-3