Practice Exam

E6B05

1. What characteristic of a PIN diode makes it useful as an RF switch?

• A. Low junction capacitance
• B. Extremely high reverse breakdown voltage
• C. Reverse bias controls its forward voltage drop
• D. Ability to dissipate large amounts of power

E4D06

2. What is the term for the reduction in receiver sensitivity caused by a strong signal near the received frequency?

• A. Quieting
• B. Cross modulation interference
• C. Desensitization
• D. Reciprocal mixing

E7C08

3. Which of the following is most frequently used as a band-pass or notch filter in VHF and UHF transceivers?

• A. A swinging choke filter
• B. A Sallen-Key filter
• C. A finite impulse response filter
• D. A helical filter

E4A01

4. Which of the following limits the highest frequency signal that can be accurately displayed on a digital oscilloscope?

• A. All these choices are correct
• B. Q of the circuit
• C. Sampling rate of the analog-to-digital converter
• D. Analog-to-digital converter reference frequency

E1E11

5. What must the VE team do if an examinee scores a passing grade on all examination elements needed for an upgrade or new license?

• A. Issue the examinee the new or upgrade license
• B. All these choices are correct
• C. Photocopy all examination documents and forward them to the FCC for processing
• D. Three VEs must certify that the examinee is qualified for the license grant and that they have complied with the administering VE requirements

E8B07

6. Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a technique used for which types of amateur communication?

• A. EME
• B. Extremely low-power contacts
• C. OFDM signals are not allowed on amateur bands
• D. Digital modes

E9E01

7. Which matching system for Yagi antennas requires the driven element to be insulated from the boom?

• A. Shunt-fed
• B. Beta or hairpin
• C. T-match
• D. Gamma

E8D07

8. What is a common cause of overmodulation of AFSK signals?

• A. Bit errors in the modem
• B. Excessive numbers of retries
• C. Excessive transmit audio levels
• D. Excessive frequency deviation

E2B04

9. How is color information sent in analog SSTV?

• A. Color information is sent on a 2.8 kHz subcarrier
• B. Color is amplitude modulated on the frequency modulated intensity signal
• C. Color is sent in a color burst at the end of each line
• D. Color lines are sent sequentially

E7B10

10. In Figure E7-1, what is the purpose of R1 and R2?

• A. Feedback
• B. Load resistors
• C. Voltage divider bias
• D. Self bias

E9H02

11. Which is generally true for 160- and 80-meter receiving antennas?

• A. Low loss coax transmission line is essential for good performance
• B. They must be erected at least 1/2 wavelength above the ground to attain good directivity
• C. All these choices are correct
• D. Atmospheric noise is so high that directivity is much more important than losses

E5D10

12. As a conductor's diameter increases, what is the effect on its electrical length?

• A. It decreases
• B. It varies randomly
• C. It increases
• D. Thickness has no effect on electrical length

E5C12

13. Which point on Figure E5-1 best represents the impedance of a series circuit consisting of a 300-ohm resistor and a 19-picofarad capacitor at 21.200 MHz?

• A. Point 7
• B. Point 1
• C. Point 8
• D. Point 3

E4E07

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

• 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

E1A10

15. If an amateur station is installed aboard a ship or aircraft, what condition must be met before the station is operated?

• A. The amateur station must operate only in specific segments of the amateur service HF and VHF bands
• B. The amateur station must have a power supply that is completely independent of the main ship or aircraft power supply
• C. Its operation must be approved by the master of the ship or the pilot in command of the aircraft
• D. The amateur station operator must agree not to transmit when the main radio of the ship or aircraft is in use

E9G01

16. Which of the following can be calculated using a Smith chart?

• A. Antenna radiation pattern
• B. Impedance along transmission lines
• C. Radiation resistance
• D. Radio propagation

E6A01

17. In what application is gallium arsenide used as a semiconductor material?

• A. In very low-frequency RF circuits
• B. In microwave circuits
• C. In high-power audio circuits
• D. In high-current rectifier circuits

E3C08

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

• A. G5
• B. M9
• C. B9
• D. X5

E6E11

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

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

E4C04

20. What is the noise figure of a receiver?

• A. The ratio in dB of the noise generated by the receiver to the theoretical minimum noise
• B. The ratio in dB of the noise generated in the receiver to atmospheric noise
• C. The ratio of atmospheric noise to phase noise
• D. The ratio of the noise bandwidth in hertz to the theoretical bandwidth of a resistive network

E7H13

21. Which of the following is a technique for providing highly accurate and stable oscillators needed for microwave transmission and reception?

• A. Use a GPS signal reference
• B. All these choices are correct
• C. Use a temperature-controlled high Q dielectric resonator
• D. Use a rubidium stabilized reference oscillator

E8C05

22. What is the approximate bandwidth of a 13-WPM International Morse Code transmission?

• A. 52 Hz
• B. 13 Hz
• C. 104 Hz
• D. 26 Hz

E9C11

23. How is the far-field elevation pattern of a vertically polarized antenna affected by being mounted over seawater versus soil?

• A. Separate elevation lobes will combine into a single lobe
• B. Additional lobes appear at higher elevation angles
• C. Radiation at low angles increases
• D. Radiation at low angles decreases

E5A06

24. What is the magnitude of the circulating current within the components of a parallel LC circuit at resonance?

• A. It equals 1 divided by the quantity 2 times pi, times the square root of (inductance L multiplied by capacitance C)
• B. It is at a maximum
• C. It is at a minimum
• D. It equals 2 times pi, times the square root of (inductance L multiplied by capacitance C)

E1B09

25. Which amateur stations may be operated under RACES rules?

• A. Any FCC-licensed amateur station certified by the responsible civil defense organization for the area served
• B. Only stations meeting the FCC Part 97 technical standards for operation during an emergency
• C. Only those club stations licensed to Amateur Extra class operators
• D. Any FCC-licensed amateur station except a Technician class

E7F08

26. What is the function of decimation?

• A. Attenuating the signal
• B. Removing unnecessary significant digits
• C. Converting data to binary-coded decimal form
• D. Reducing the effective sample rate by removing samples

E9F07

27. How does parallel conductor transmission line compare to coaxial cable with a plastic dielectric?

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

E0A03

28. Over what range of frequencies are the FCC human body RF exposure limits most restrictive?

• A. 3 - 30 MHz
• B. 30 - 300 MHz
• C. 300 kHz - 3 MHz
• D. 300 - 3000 MHz

E8A10

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

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

E1C05

30. Under what situation may a station transmit third party communications while being automatically controlled?

• A. Never
• B. Only when transmitting RTTY or data emissions
• C. Only when transmitting SSB or CW
• D. On any mode approved by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration

E2E05

31. Which of these digital modes does not support keyboard-to-keyboard operation?

• A. PSK31
• B. MFSK16
• C. WSPR
• D. RTTY

E7E03

32. What is a frequency discriminator?

• A. An automatic band-switching circuit
• B. A circuit for filtering closely adjacent signals
• C. A circuit for detecting FM signals
• D. An FM generator circuit

E9A06

33. What is the effective radiated power (ERP) of a repeater station with 200 watts transmitter power output, 4 dB feed line loss, 3.2 dB duplexer loss, 0.8 dB circulator loss, and 10 dBd antenna gain?

• A. 300 watts
• B. 317 watts
• C. 126 watts
• D. 2,000 watts

E4B09

34. Which of the following can be measured by a two-port vector network analyzer?

• A. Filter frequency response
• B. Forward power
• C. Pulse rise time
• D. Phase noise

E5B01

35. What is the term for the time required for the capacitor in an RC circuit to be charged to 63.2% of the applied voltage or to discharge to 36.8% of its initial voltage?

• A. One time constant
• B. One exponential period
• C. A time factor of one
• D. An exponential rate of one

E9D10

36. How does radiation resistance of a base-fed whip antenna change below its resonant frequency?

• A. Radiation resistance increases
• B. Radiation resistance does not depend on frequency
• C. Radiation resistance becomes imaginary
• D. Radiation resistance decreases

E6D01

37. What is piezoelectricity?

• A. A characteristic of materials that have an index of refraction which depends on the polarization of the electromagnetic wave passing through it
• B. The ability of materials to generate voltage when an electromagnetic wave of a certain frequency is applied
• C. The ability of materials to generate electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency when voltage is applied
• D. A characteristic of materials that generate a voltage when stressed and that flex when a voltage is applied

E3A04

38. In what direction does an electromagnetic wave travel?

• A. It travels at a right angle to the electric and magnetic fields
• B. It depends on the phase angle of the electric field
• C. It depends on the phase angle of the magnetic field
• D. It travels parallel to the electric and magnetic fields

E7D02

39. How does a switchmode voltage regulator work?

• A. By varying the duty cycle of pulses input to a filter
• B. By varying the conductivity of a pass element
• C. By switching between two Zener diode reference voltages
• D. By alternating the output between positive and negative voltages

E9B01

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

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

E2A08

41. Why should effective radiated power (ERP) be limited to a satellite that uses a linear transponder?

• A. To avoid reducing the downlink power to all other users
• B. To prevent creating errors in the satellite telemetry
• C. To prevent the satellite from emitting out-of-band signals
• D. To avoid interfering with terrestrial QSOs

E7A05

42. Which of the following circuits continuously alternates between two states without an external clock signal?

• A. Astable multivibrator
• B. T flip-flop
• C. Monostable multivibrator
• D. J-K flip-flop

E1F04

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

• A. A line roughly parallel to and south of the border between the US and Canada
• B. A line roughly parallel to and east of the US Pacific coastline
• C. A line roughly parallel to and west of the US Atlantic coastline
• D. A line roughly parallel to and north of the border between the US and Mexico

E2C02

44. Which of the following file formats is used for exchanging amateur radio log data?

• A. ADIF
• B. OCF
• C. ARLD
• D. NEC

E6C02

45. What happens when the level of a comparator's input signal crosses the threshold voltage?

• A. The IC input can be damaged
• B. The comparator changes its output state
• C. The reference level appears at the output
• D. The feedback loop becomes unstable

E6F11

46. What is the approximate open-circuit voltage produced by a fully illuminated silicon photovoltaic cell?

• A. 1.1 volts
• B. 1.5 volts
• C. 0.5 volts
• D. 0.7 volts

E2D11

47. How do APRS stations relay data?

• A. By DMR repeaters
• B. By packet ACK/NAK relay
• C. By packet digipeaters
• D. By C4FM repeaters

E7G02

48. What is the frequency response of the circuit in E7-3 if a capacitor is added across the feedback resistor?

• A. Notch filter
• B. High-pass filter
• C. Low-pass filter
• D. Band-pass filter

E3B04

49. What are "extraordinary" and "ordinary" waves?

• A. Independently propagating, elliptically polarized waves created in the ionosphere
• B. Refracted rays and reflected waves
• C. Extraordinary waves exhibit rare long-skip propagation, compared to ordinary waves, which travel shorter distances
• D. Long-path and short-path waves

E1D11

50. Which amateur stations are eligible to operate as Earth stations?

• A. Any amateur licensee who has successfully completed the AMSAT space communications course
• B. Any amateur station, subject to the privileges of the class of operator license held by the control operator
• C. Only those of Amateur Extra class operators
• D. Only those of General, Advanced or Amateur Extra class operators