Amateur Radio for Smart People
Which of the following is a good way to judge whether your uplink power is neither too low nor too high? A. Check your signal strength report in the telemetry data B. Listen for distortion on your downlink signal C. Your signal strength on the downlink should be about the same as the beacon D. … Read more
What is meant by circularly polarized electromagnetic waves? A. Waves with an electric field bent into a circular shapeB. Waves with a rotating electric fieldC. Waves that circle the EarthD. Waves produced by a loop antenna To answer this we need to understand what’s going on inside an electromagnetic (or EM) wave. In an EM … Read more
Approximately how long is each side of the reflector element of a quad antenna? A. Slightly less than 1/4 wavelength B. Slightly more than 1/4 wavelength C. Slightly less than 1/2 wavelength D. Slightly more than 1/2 wavelength So lets look at what a “quad antenna” entails. As you might have guessed from the name, … Read more
What is a way to enable quick access to a favorite frequency on your transceiver? A. Enable the CTCSS tones B. Store the frequency in a memory channel C. Disable the CTCSS tones D. Use the scan mode to select the desired frequency Well, here’s the thing. I’m fairly certain since you’re a smart person … Read more
Which of the following HF digital modes uses variable-length coding for bandwidth efficiency? A. RTTYB. PACTORC. MT63D. PSK31 Now, I guess this answers my question about last weeks Extra question. Mainly why is it important. It’s important because it does matter in transmission efficiency. So which mode would be a good and efficient method of … Read more
What are the basic components of virtually all sine wave oscillators? A. An amplifier and a dividerB. A frequency multiplier and a mixerC. A circulator and a filter operating in a feed-forward loopD. A filter and an amplifier operating in a feedback loop To answer this question, lets look at what makes up a sine … Read more
What type of electrical component consists of two or more conductive surfaces separated by an insulator?* A. ResistorB. PotentiometerC. OscillatorD. Capacitor [T6A05] Well, I guess I gave it away in the post title. Yes, the answer is D. Capacitor. But what exactly is going on here? A capacitor is a device that has the “capacity” … Read more
What is one advantage of using ASCII code for data communications? A. It includes built in error correction featuresB. It contains fewer information bits per character than any other codeC. It is possible to transmit both upper and lower case textD. It uses one character as a shift code to send numeric and special characters … Read more
What is a use for an antenna analyzer other than measuring the SWR of an antenna system? A. Measuring the front to back ratio of an antennaB. Measuring the turns ratio of a power transformerC. Determining the impedance of an unknown or unmarked coaxial cableD. Determining the gain of a directional antenna Well, you’re not … Read more
What is the current flowing through a 24-ohm resistor connected across 240 volts? [T5D09] A. 24,000 amperes B. 0.1 amperes C. 10 amperes D. 216 amperes Get out your calculators, because this is a cut-and-dried case of needing to use Ohm’s law. Ohm’s law defines the relationship beteween voltage, current, and resistance in a circuit. … Read more
