Practice Exam

E5B09

1. What is the relationship between the AC current through a capacitor and the voltage across a capacitor?

• A. Current leads voltage by 90 degrees
• B. Voltage leads current by 90 degrees
• C. Voltage and current are in phase
• D. Voltage and current are 180 degrees out of phase

E6C09

2. What is used to design the configuration of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)?

• A. Karnaugh maps
• B. Hardware description language (HDL)
• C. An auto-router
• D. Machine and assembly language

E9C13

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

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

E1D02

4. Which of the following may transmit encrypted messages?

• A. Telecommand signals from a space telecommand station
• B. Mesh network backbone nodes
• C. Telecommand signals to terrestrial repeaters
• D. Auxiliary relay links carrying repeater audio

E9B01

5. What is the 3 dB beamwidth of the antenna radiation pattern shown in Figure E9-1?

• A. 25 degrees
• B. 50 degrees
• C. 30 degrees
• D. 75 degrees

E4D09

6. What is the purpose of the preselector in a communications receiver?

• A. To store frequencies that are often used
• B. To allow selection of the optimum RF amplifier device
• C. To provide broadband attenuation before the first RF stage to prevent intermodulation
• D. To increase the rejection of signals outside the band being received

E0A09

7. Which of the following types of equipment are exempt from RF exposure evaluations?

• A. Hand-held transceivers sold before May 3, 2021
• B. Dish antennas less than one meter in diameter
• C. Transceivers with less than 7 watts of RF output
• D. Antennas that radiate only in the near field

E1F07

8. When may an amateur station send a message to a business?

• A. At no time
• B. When the pecuniary interest of the amateur or his or her employer is less than $25
• C. When the pecuniary interest of the amateur or his or her employer is less than $50
• D. When neither the amateur nor their employer has a pecuniary interest in the communications

E7B09

9. What is characteristic of an emitter follower (or common collector) amplifier?

• A. Acts as an OR circuit if one input is grounded
• B. Differential inputs and single output
• C. Low input impedance and phase inversion from input to output
• D. Input and output signals in-phase

E7H09

10. What type of frequency synthesizer circuit uses a phase accumulator, lookup table, digital-to-analog converter, and a low-pass anti-alias filter?

• A. A direct digital synthesizer
• B. A hybrid synthesizer
• C. A direct conversion synthesizer
• D. A phase-locked loop synthesizer

E4C02

11. Which of the following receiver circuits can be effective in eliminating interference from strong out-of-band signals?

• A. A narrow IF filter
• B. A notch filter
• C. A front-end filter or preselector
• D. A properly adjusted product detector

E8D08

12. What parameter evaluates distortion of an AFSK signal caused by excessive input audio levels?

• A. Baud error rate
• B. Signal-to-noise ratio
• C. Repeat Request Rate (RRR)
• D. Intermodulation Distortion (IMD)

E1E10

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

• A. They must collect and send the documents directly to the FCC
• B. They must submit the application document to the coordinating VEC according to the coordinating VEC instructions
• C. They must collect and submit the documents to the coordinating VEC for grading
• D. They must return the documents to the applicant for submission to the FCC according to the FCC instructions

E3C08

14. Which of the following is the space-weather term for an extreme geomagnetic storm?

• A. G5
• B. B9
• C. X5
• D. M9

E5D11

15. How much real power is consumed in a circuit consisting of a 100-ohm resistor in series with a 100-ohm inductive reactance drawing 1 ampere?

• A. 141.4 watts
• B. 200 watts
• C. 70.7 watts
• D. 100 watts

E9H03

16. What is receiving directivity factor (RDF)?

• A. Relative directivity compared to isotropic
• B. Forward gain compared to the gain in the reverse direction
• C. Relative directivity compared to a dipole
• D. Peak antenna gain compared to average gain over the hemisphere around and above the antenna

E6F01

17. What absorbs the energy from light falling on a photovoltaic cell?

• A. Photons
• B. Holes
• C. Electrons
• D. Protons

E3B11

18. At what time of day is sporadic-E propagation most likely to occur?

• A. Between sunset and midnight
• B. Between midnight and sunrise
• C. Between sunset and sunrise
• D. Between sunrise and sunset

E9E05

19. What Yagi driven element feed point impedance is required to use a beta or hairpin matching system?

• A. Inductive (driven element electrically longer than 1/2 wavelength)
• B. Purely reactive
• C. Capacitive (driven element electrically shorter than 1/2 wavelength)
• D. Purely resistive

E7F11

20. What sets the minimum detectable signal level for a direct-sampling software defined receiver in the absence of atmospheric or thermal noise?

• A. Reference voltage level and sample width in bits
• B. Missing codes and jitter
• C. Data storage transfer rate
• D. Sample clock phase noise

E4A09

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

• A. All these choices are correct
• B. Never use a high-impedance probe to measure a low-impedance circuit
• C. Minimize the length of the probe's ground connection
• D. Never use a DC-coupled probe to measure an AC circuit

E4B07

22. What do the subscripts of S parameters represent?

• A. Relative quality of the data
• B. The port or ports at which measurements are made
• C. The relative time between measurements
• D. Frequency order of the measurements

E2D07

23. What digital protocol is used by APRS?

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

E1A06

24. What is the required transmit frequency of a CW signal for channelized 60 meter operation?

• A. On any frequency where the signal's sidebands are within the channel
• B. At the lowest frequency of the channel
• C. At the center frequency of the channel
• D. At the highest frequency of the channel

E2C04

25. Which of the following frequencies can be used for amateur radio mesh networks?

• 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 41-43

E2B09

26. What kind of receiver can be used to receive and decode SSTV using the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) protocol?

• A. SSB
• B. AM
• C. AREDN
• D. CDMA

E6D10

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

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

E1C12

28. In what portion of the 630-meter band are phone emissions permitted?

• A. None
• B. Only the top 3 kHz
• C. The entire band
• D. Only the bottom 3 kHz

E9F12

29. What impedance does a 1/4-wavelength transmission line present to an RF generator when the line is open at the far end?

• A. The same as the characteristic impedance of the line
• B. Very high impedance
• C. Very low impedance
• D. The same as the input impedance to the generator

E5A12

30. What is the half-power bandwidth of a resonant circuit that has a resonant frequency of 3.7 MHz and a Q of 118?

• A. 218.3 kHz
• B. 436.6 kHz
• C. 31.4 kHz
• D. 15.7 kHz

E7A10

31. What is a truth table?

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

E9D04

32. Why should antenna loading coils have a high ratio of reactance to resistance?

• A. To minimize the Q
• B. To swamp out harmonics
• C. To maximize efficiency
• D. To lower the radiation angle

E9A05

33. What does the term "ground gain" mean?

• A. The change in signal strength caused by grounding the antenna
• B. An increase in signal strength from ground reflections in the environment of the antenna
• C. The gain of the antenna with respect to a dipole at ground level
• D. To force net gain to 0 dB by grounding part of the antenna

E8C02

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

• A. The number of characters carried per second by the station-to-station link
• B. The rate at which the waveform changes to convey information
• C. The maximum rate at which the forward error correction code can make corrections
• D. The number of control characters in a message packet

E4E04

35. How can conducted noise from an automobile battery charging system be suppressed?

• A. By installing a high-pass filter in series with the radio's power lead and a low-pass filter in parallel with the antenna feed line
• B. By installing ferrite chokes on the charging system leads
• C. By installing a noise suppression resistor and a blocking capacitor at the battery
• D. By installing filter capacitors in series with the alternator leads

E3A13

36. Which of these emission modes is best for auroral propagation?

• A. FM
• B. CW
• C. SSB
• D. RTTY

E7G12

37. What is an operational amplifier?

• A. A digital audio amplifier whose characteristics are determined by components external to the amplifier
• B. A high-gain, direct-coupled differential amplifier with very high input impedance and very low output impedance
• C. A RF amplifier used in the UHF and microwave regions
• D. An amplifier used to increase the average output of frequency modulated amateur signals to the legal limit

E7C05

38. Which filter type has ripple in the passband and a sharp cutoff?

• A. A Butterworth filter
• B. An active LC filter
• C. A passive op-amp filter
• D. A Chebyshev filter

E2A03

39. How is an upload signal processed by an inverting linear transponder?

• A. The signal is passed through a nonlinear filter
• B. The signal is mixed with a local oscillator signal and the difference product is transmitted
• C. The signal is detected and remodulated on the reverse sideband
• D. The signal is reduced to I and Q components, and the Q component is filtered out

E6E11

40. What is a characteristic of DIP packaging used for integrated circuits?

• A. Extremely high resistance between pins (doubly insulated package)
• B. Two rows of connecting pins on opposite sides of package (dual in-line package)
• C. Two chips in each package (dual in package)
• D. Extremely low stray capacitance (dielectrically isolated package)

E8A10

41. What is the purpose of a low-pass filter used at the output of a digital-to-analog converter?

• A. Lower the input bandwidth to increase the effective resolution
• B. Remove spurious sampling artifacts from the output signal
• C. Improve accuracy by removing out-of-sequence codes from the input
• D. All these choices are correct

E1B02

42. Which of the following is an acceptable bandwidth for digital voice or slow-scan TV transmissions made on the HF amateur bands?

• A. 3 kHz
• B. 15 kHz
• C. 20 kHz
• D. 10 kHz

E6A05

43. How does DC input impedance at the gate of a field-effect transistor (FET) compare with that of a bipolar transistor?

• A. They are both low impedance
• B. An FET has higher input impedance
• C. An FET has lower input impedance
• D. They are both high impedance

E7D12

44. What is the dropout voltage of a linear voltage regulator?

• A. Maximum that the output voltage may decrease at rated load
• B. Maximum output voltage drop when the input voltage is varied over its specified range
• C. Minimum input voltage for rated power dissipation
• D. Minimum input-to-output voltage required to maintain regulation

E6B02

45. Which characteristic of a Schottky diode makes it a better choice than a silicon junction diode for use as a power supply rectifier?

• A. Longer carrier retention time
• B. Lower forward voltage drop
• C. Much higher reverse voltage breakdown
• D. More constant reverse avalanche voltage

E9G11

46. In what units are the wavelength scales on a Smith chart calibrated?

• A. In fractions of antenna electrical frequency
• B. In fractions of transmission line electrical wavelength
• C. In fractions of transmission line electrical frequency
• D. In fractions of antenna electrical wavelength

E2E08

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

• A. AMTOR
• B. PACTOR
• C. RTTY
• D. PSK31

E7E09

48. What occurs when the input signal levels to a mixer are too high?

• A. Spurious mixer products are generated
• B. Mixer blanking occurs
• C. Excessive AGC voltage levels are generated
• D. Automatic limiting occurs

E5C01

49. Which of the following represents pure capacitive reactance of 100 ohms in rectangular notation?

• A. 0 - j100
• B. 100 - j0
• C. 0 + j100
• D. 100 + j0

E8B03

50. What is the modulation index of an FM phone signal having a maximum frequency deviation of 3000 Hz either side of the carrier frequency if the highest modulating frequency is 1000 Hz?

• A. 0.3
• B. 6
• C. 3
• D. 0.6