Național VS 43-614

The Național VS 43-614 is a black-and-white tube television set made by Electronica in Bucharest from complete kits of the Japanese National (Matsushita) brand [1]. The book describes it as an excellent set: very sensitive and good for weak signals at the edge of the coverage area, with very stable synchronisation, reliable, robust and attractive [1].

Electronica also turned to Matsushita, the best Japanese maker of television sets (brand National in Asia, Panasonic in the USA and Western Europe) [1]. The first set to go through the works was the National RK 11, the version for the East European OIRT standard of the RK3 model, prepared by the Japanese for Romania [1]. Complete Japanese kits for about 50,000 sets a year were then contracted [1]. In all, about 240,000 TV sets were made with Japanese kits, with 15–16 tubes, 6–10 germanium diodes, a 12-channel turret tuner, a common video-sound path, 1.8–2 W audio output, picture tubes with 90° and later 110° deflection and electrostatic focusing, 16–18 kV accelerating voltage, and 43, 47 or 59 cm screens; they drew 160–180 W from the mains and were reliable [1].

The first set of this series to go through the works was the National RK 11 [1]. Electronica’s engineers widened the video bandwidth of this series from 3 MHz (the Japanese standard) to 5 MHz (the OIRT standard), improving the picture [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].