Haha! I knew I was going to get questions about the peak power levels. I should have mentioned this in the first email, but it was already pretty long winded (so here goes a long winded reply).

First up about my original question about legal issues: It looks like the consensus is I'm good to go. Right now based on calculation, I should be legal with enough suppression. I will measure the system performance before going on the air to ensure that I am legal.

To address the numerous concerns about peak power: So the 100W figure is the peak power the amp can deliver. I will /not/ be operating this amp anywhere near its peak power levels when working the birds. So do not fear! I won't be blasting the birds.

However, increasing the scope of my interests in the hobby a bit from Amateur Satellites to Amateur Radio in general, having a canned system capable of about 100W (a little higher at VHF, and just about 100W at UHF) could come in handy for things like VHF and up contesting. This system has overlapping amateur radio goals, of which satellites are one.

The Radio: I am not using a traditional hardware radio, but rather an SDR (ettus research B210) my wife bought me for my birthday (best present ever) that only puts out about +10dBm (plenty to drive this amp).

The Antennas: I'll be using M2 Antennas products with "gobs" of gain, further reducing the needed TX power requirements. I do want to experiment in the future with some homebrew omnis (lindenblad, eggbeater, etc..) and being able to bump up the power a bit on TX without having to worry will be a nice feature.

To address Paul's note about control: My involvement to date with the Fox project is with the camera card, not with control ops. However, I am VERY interested in the possibility of joining the Operations team and becoming a control station for AMSAT for the Fox series (and beyond). However, for all my "book-learning," and LOTS of RX only ops on the birds, I only have a handful of actual contacts under my belt. So right now I'm just trying to get a station up and running to increase my activity on the birds. Maybe down the road when the bugs have been worked out of the system and I am a little less green, then I'll look at control ops a little more closely, and having a decent amp could come in handy there as well (assuming of course the AMSAT ops team needs/wants me to participate in control ops).

Thank you very much to everyone for the quick feedback. I appreciate everyone taking the time to help educate me.

-Zach, KJ4QLP