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Yes durban, that's how I became an antiques expert too!

Can someone please parse LORAL for me?

Well done Unclued - I don't know how I didn't think of the 4-large letter option, makes more sense than the others although I did like the way the circular approach made it resemble the subject in question.

I do sometimes wonder though if these somewhat ambiguous endings aren't just chucked in every now and again to slash the numbers of all-correct solvers - I stumbled last year on the one with the scoreboard which from the annual stats took out very nearly 40% of entrants which is a ridiculous failure rate.

Did anyone also notice that the initial letters of the examples spelt out a 4th (abbreviated) example? Maybe just a coincidence.

L or L - no real choice of latitude (around A)

I'm quite surprised at the comments on possible ambiguities in the endgame. I didn't have any doubt whatsoever about the presentation in SE corner once I made sense of it, given the theme and one of the thematic examples. I can see that the thematic word could be written in several arrangements in the single cell, but the two most obvious ones are linear and two up, two down, matching the arrangement in the SE. I imagine either would be acceptable.

Occasionally there may be an unforeseen ambiguity but I do not believe the Listener editors deliberately create or allow preamble ambiguities to trip people up.

I'd like to think you are right Murky, really I would.

Can I add to your paranoia, S_Pugh?

Worrabout an unstated requirement for bars in the 4 in 1 square?

Many thanks s_pugh, now I need to find the 3 thematic examples.That is once I get the blasted extra's and omitted's to correlate to each other. I have double/treble checked my answers, but can only get 21 correlations. Ho-hum, lets try again!!!!

I am going insane here, do the initial letters of the examples spell a pet?

Yes!
I think two of the three words are in Bradford’s dictionary.