E 43 VS 43-643

The E 43 (VS 43-643) was the first television set of Romanian design, made by Electronica in Bucharest [1]. It has a 43 cm, 110° picture tube; the companion model with a 47 cm tube was the E 47 [1].

In 1963–1965, alongside the sets built from imported kits, the TV design department (CS2) produced the first Romanian-designed television sets, the E 43 and E 47 (VS 43-643, VS 47-644 and VS 47-644B), approved in 1964 [1]. The book calls the design, begun in 1962, rather a step back: it used old solutions such as two PY82 tubes as mains rectifiers instead of semiconductor diodes, an autotransformer instead of series-connected filaments, and a 6AL5 vacuum double diode as sound demodulator instead of germanium diodes already made in large series at IPRS; the bulky turret tuner, already made at Electronica, used 6BQ7 and ECF80 tubes [1]. The basic circuits (four EF80, EF184 and PL83 for video, PCL82 for audio, PCL82 and ECC82 for vertical sweep, PL36, PY88 and EY86 for horizontal sweep and EHT, 18 tubes in all) were well made [1].

About 170,000 sets of the E 43 / E 47 family (also given as E 43-647) were made in 1964–1966, with many imported components, on three printed-circuit boards; their reliability was low compared with the Japanese-kit series, which caused acute problems [1]. The E 43 with its 110° tube is also significant because it used the first patented Romanian invention in the field, a solution to the interference radiated by television sets [1].

In the source table, video sensitivity is given for 6 V rms on the picture-tube cathode, sound sensitivity for 50 mW output, the selectivity values are, in order, the rejection of the own sound carrier, of the lower adjacent sound carrier, of the upper adjacent picture carrier, of the IF and of the image frequency, and the audio response at −3 dB [1].