Practice Exam

E2C04

1. On which of the following frequencies is an amateur radio contest contact generally discouraged?

• A. 28.330 MHz
• B. 3.525 MHz
• C. 146.52 MHz
• D. 14.020 MHz

E9B13

2. What does the abbreviation NEC stand for when applied to antenna modeling programs?

• A. Numeric Electrical Computation
• B. National Electrical Code
• C. Next Element Comparison
• D. Numerical Electromagnetics Code

E1E08

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

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

E1D03

4. What is a telecommand station in the amateur satellite service?

• A. An amateur station located on the Earth's surface for communications with other Earth stations by means of Earth satellites
• B. An amateur station that transmits communications to initiate, modify or terminate functions of a space station
• C. An amateur station located more than 50 km above the Earth's surface
• D. An amateur station that transmits telemetry consisting of measurements of upper atmosphere data from space

E3C13

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

• A. Elliptical
• B. Circular
• C. Horizontal
• D. Vertical

E7B17

6. Why are third-order intermodulation distortion products of particular concern in linear power amplifiers?

• A. Because they invert the sidebands causing distortion
• B. Because they maintain the sidebands, thus causing multiple duplicate signals
• C. Because they are relatively close in frequency to the desired signal
• D. Because they are relatively far in frequency from the desired signal

E7D11

7. What is the purpose of R1 in the circuit shown in Figure E7-3?

• A. It bypasses hum around D1
• B. It couples hum to D1
• C. It supplies current to D1
• D. It provides a constant load to the voltage source

E2D07

8. Which of the following digital protocols is used by APRS?

• A. AMTOR
• B. 802.11
• C. PACTOR
• D. AX.25

E9G07

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

• A. The current axis
• B. The reactance axis
• C. The voltage axis
• D. The resistance axis

E9A10

10. How is antenna efficiency calculated?

• A. (radiation resistance / transmission resistance) x 100%
• B. (radiation resistance / total resistance) x 100%
• C. (total resistance / radiation resistance) x 100%
• D. (effective radiated power / transmitter output) x 100%

E5D14

11. What is reactive power?

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

E4C06

12. A CW receiver with the AGC off has an equivalent input noise power density of -174 dBm/Hz. What would be the level of an unmodulated carrier input to this receiver that would yield an audio output SNR of 0 dB in a 400 Hz noise bandwidth?

• A. -155 dBm
• B. 174 dBm
• C. -164 dBm
• D. -148 dBm

E8D15

13. Which of the following is a typical value for the RMS voltage at a standard U.S. household electrical power outlet?

• A. 340V AC
• B. 170V AC
• C. 85V AC
• D. 120V AC

E9C12

14. When constructing a Beverage antenna, which of the following factors should be included in the design to achieve good performance at the desired frequency?

• A. It should be configured as a four-sided loop
• B. It must be mounted more than 1 wavelength above ground
• C. It should be one or more wavelengths long
• D. Its overall length must not exceed 1/4 wavelength

E6B10

15. In Figure E6-3, what is the schematic symbol for a light-emitting diode?

• A. 7
• B. 6
• C. 5
• D. 1

E4B03

16. If a frequency counter with a specified accuracy of +/- 1.0 ppm reads 146,520,000 Hz, what is the most the actual frequency being measured could differ from the reading?

• A. 1.4652 MHz
• B. 146.52 Hz
• C. 165.2 Hz
• D. 14.652 kHz

E2E01

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

• A. FSK
• B. Spread spectrum
• C. DTMF tones modulating an FM signal
• D. Pulse modulation

E9F07

18. How does ladder line compare to small-diameter coaxial cable such as RG-58 at 50 MHz?

• A. Lower velocity factor
• B. Smaller reflection coefficient
• C. Higher SWR
• D. Lower loss

E9H05

19. What is the main drawback of a wire-loop antenna for direction finding?

• A. It receives equally well in all directions
• B. It is non-rotatable
• C. It has a bidirectional pattern
• D. It is practical for use only on VHF bands

E9D07

20. What is a disadvantage of using a multiband trapped antenna?

• A. It is too sharply directional at lower frequencies
• B. It must be neutralized
• C. It might radiate harmonics
• D. It radiates the harmonics and fundamental equally well

E1C05

21. When may an automatically controlled station originate third party communications?

• A. Only when transmitting an RTTY or data emissions
• B. When approved by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration
• C. Never
• D. When specifically agreed upon by the sending and receiving stations

E7G04

22. Which of the following is a type of capacitor best suited for use in high-stability op-amp RC active filter circuits?

• A. Paper
• B. Disc ceramic
• C. Electrolytic
• D. Polystyrene

E6E09

23. Which of the following must be done to insure that a crystal oscillator provides the frequency specified by the crystal manufacturer?

• A. Provide the crystal with a specified parallel inductance
• B. Bias the crystal at a specified voltage
• C. Bias the crystal at a specified current
• D. Provide the crystal with a specified parallel capacitance

E5A11

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

• A. 47.3 kHz
• B. 157.8 Hz
• C. 315.6 Hz
• D. 23.67 kHz

E2A07

25. Which of the following types of signals can be relayed through a linear transponder?

• A. All of these choices are correct
• B. SSB and SSTV
• C. PSK and Packet
• D. FM and CW

E1F14

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

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

E6C02

27. What logic state do the inputs of a TTL device assume if they are left open?

• A. Open inputs on a TTL device are ignored
• B. The device becomes randomized and will not provide consistent high or low-logic states
• C. A logic-high state
• D. A logic-low state

E2B04

28. What is blanking in a video signal?

• A. Turning off the scanning beam while it is traveling from right to left or from bottom to top
• B. Turning off the scanning beam at the conclusion of a transmission
• C. Transmitting a black and white test pattern
• D. Synchronization of the horizontal and vertical sync pulses

E7E13

29. Which of the following describes a common means of generating an SSB signal when using digital signal processing?

• A. Mixing products are converted to voltages and subtracted by adder circuits
• B. The quadrature method
• C. A frequency synthesizer removes the unwanted sidebands
• D. Emulation of quartz crystal filter characteristics

E4E06

30. What is a major cause of atmospheric static?

• A. Meteor showers
• B. Thunderstorms
• C. Geomagnetic storms
• D. Solar radio frequency emissions

E8B01

31. What is the term for the ratio between the frequency deviation of an RF carrier wave, and the modulating frequency of its corresponding FM-phone signal?

• A. Percentage of modulation
• B. Modulation index
• C. Quieting index
• D. FM compressibility

E4A02

32. Which of the following parameters would a spectrum analyzer display on the horizontal axis?

• A. Time
• B. Q
• C. SWR
• D. Frequency

E1B09

33. Which amateur stations may be operated in RACES?

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

E9E06

34. What is the equivalent lumped-constant network for a hairpin matching system on a 3-element Yagi?

• A. L network
• B. Pi-L network
• C. Parallel-resonant tank
• D. Pi network

E6D11

35. How many turns will be required to produce a 1-mH inductor using a ferrite toroidal core that has an inductance index (A L) value of 523 millihenrys/1000 turns?

• A. 2 turns
• B. 43 turns
• C. 4 turns
• D. 229 turns

E3B03

36. What is the best time of day for transequatorial propagation?

• A. Noon
• B. Morning
• C. Afternoon or early evening
• D. Late at night

E3A07

37. What frequency range would you normally tune to find EME signals in the 70 cm band?

• A. 431.100 - 431.200 MHz
• B. 430.000 - 430.150 MHz
• C. 430.100 - 431.100 MHz
• D. 432.000 - 432.100 MHz

E6A05

38. What is the alpha of a bipolar junction transistor?

• A. The change of base current with respect to collector current
• B. The change of collector current with respect to gate current
• C. The change of collector current with respect to base current
• D. The change of collector current with respect to emitter current

E0A04

39. 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?

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

E8C04

40. What technique is used to minimize the bandwidth requirements of a PSK31 signal?

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

E5C06

41. In polar coordinates, what is the impedance of a network consisting of a 100-ohm-reactance capacitor in series with a 100-ohm resistor?

• A. 141 ohms at an angle of -45 degrees
• B. 191 ohms at an angle of -85 degrees
• C. 121 ohms at an angle of -25 degrees
• D. 161 ohms at an angle of -65 degrees

E7A06

42. What is a characteristic of a monostable multivibrator?

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

E5B07

43. 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?

• A. 14.0 degrees with the voltage leading the current
• B. 68.2 degrees with the voltage lagging the current
• C. 68.2 degrees with the voltage leading the current
• D. 14.0 degrees with the voltage lagging the current

E1A06

44. Which of the following describes the rules for operation on the 60 meter band?

• A. Operation is restricted to specific emission types and specific channels
• B. All of these choices are correct
• C. Operation is restricted to LSB
• D. Working DX is not permitted

E4D14

45. Which of the following is a way to reduce the likelihood of receiver desensitization?

• A. Raise the receiver IF frequency
• B. Decrease the RF bandwidth of the receiver
• C. Switch from fast AGC to slow AGC
• D. Increase the receiver front end gain

E6F08

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

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

E7C04

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

• A. Network resistances are substituted for load resistances and reactances are matched to the resistances
• B. It cancels the reactive part of the impedance and changes the resistive part to a desired value
• C. It introduces transconductance to cancel the reactive part of impedance
• D. It introduces negative resistance to cancel the resistive part of impedance

E7H08

48. What is a Gunn diode oscillator?

• A. A highly stable reference oscillator based on the hot-carrier effect
• B. A highly stable reference oscillator based on the tee-notch principle
• C. An oscillator based on the argon gas diode
• D. An oscillator based on the negative resistance properties of properly-doped semiconductors

E7F09

49. What is the purpose of a frequency counter?

• A. To provide a digital representation of the frequency of a signal
• B. To provide a signal source at a very accurate frequency
• C. To display all frequency components of a transmitted signal
• D. To generate a series of reference signals at known frequency intervals

E8A04

50. What is equivalent to the root-mean-square value of an AC voltage?

• A. The AC voltage found by taking the square of the average value of the peak AC voltage
• B. The AC voltage found by taking the square root of the average AC value
• C. The DC voltage causing the same amount of heating in a given resistor as the corresponding peak AC voltage
• D. The DC voltage causing the same amount of heating in a resistor as the corresponding RMS AC voltage