I have been looking for a decent (quality wise) amplifier for vhf. Something in the 200 watt area. Ive already done everything I can antenna wise, and im as high as I can go right now.

All I can find are the mirage and the rm italy amps for vhf. Anyone have experience with them? Is there some other brands out there that are pretty well made?  Didnt think it would be such slim pickings, but so far im not having much luck.

I have a Mirage B2518G. It works ok'ish. It will only take about 18W of input, so I'm not sure what it's outputting. It reminds me of a crappy car audio amp from the 80's. I don't understand why VHF and HF amps cost so much. They aren't that complicated and there's not a lot in them. The two brands that you mentioned are mostly what's available in VHF.

A fair bit of cost is in the output finals I suspect, but still only 2 brands are in the front row. Like you said,  pretty expensive to gamble on. Thanks for the input tho!

When I was looking into amps for SSB I thought ~400w was a good spot to be. That is a good improvement in db over a 50w radio and half the cost of a legal limit amp. The one I was looking on swap.qth for was TE Systems 1452G. If you aren't getting into SSB then I wouldn't bother with a big amp.

Ill check those out. I spend most of my time in vhf, fm mode. I can hear stations and repeaters over 100 miles, but cant transmit to them. I probably will get into ssb later, but I figured a 200w amp would be about right so I could reach stations I can hear. I can use it later in different modes too.

I did find some kits for 1kw and 1.5kw vhf but thats way over kill for me. Ill check out the TE systems amps. Thanks!

The standard response will be to look at your antenna before you look at an amp. Good antenna with lots of gain will do more good than an amp ever will.

Yea thats the average response. I get about 10db gain from my yagi and upgraded all my coax. Recieving is great, and when theres some propagation its pretty fun. I just cant reach some of the further stations.

Saying that you have done all you can antenna wise is about like saying you have driven as far as you can possibly drive.  You can always go an extra mile.  You mentioned that you have a Yagi, well you could also put another one beside it so that you have two.  Then you could double that and put two more above (or below depending on your point of view) so that you have four.  At that point you are really starting to talk "Gain".  If that isn't enough start adding more elements.  And more elements.  And more elements.

I saw a photo somewhere recently of a station that had stacked 7 element full-size 40 meter Yagis.  It was monstrous but I guarantee he gets heard on 4 meters.

How tall is your tower? 100mi is impressive for a base station. I've made contacts around 110mi but I was up on a mountain with LOS to the repeater and I used a 4el quad. Lowering your take off angle might be more helpful than raw power for LOS propagation.

Dont have a tower, but ive got a mast up 35' on top of a 1200' ridge. A quad might be doable. Ive built some small ones before but i could probably get one up there.

Stacks of yagis are well beying my physical abilities. Age and injury have taken a toll. If i still had the 100' tower and could climb one I would use that.

I think the TE systems amp might be what I get. I can drive it at low power most of the time and keep it about 150 watts.