Its about the right price for +20dBmW at 6cm. minicircuits.com has several MMIC in that freq range at that output power.
Transcom sells a nice well over 30 dBmW MMIC for that same freq band... you can buy a kit from minikits in australia, the EME141-5800, the bare chip is like $20.
Some ham radio work shows you don't need the fancy 4 layer weird oshpark material for workable stuff in that general freq range. http://www.w1ghz.org/MBT/multiband.htm
As an interesting extreme opposite comparison, there was a B-29-ish era chirp radar altimeter for aircraft landing which was almost entirely mechanical. A little buzzer/motor thing varied the size of a resonant cavity by a little bit, and the resulting audio signal was turned into a voltage / altitude using something like a capacitor/resistor bridge. So one vacuum tube, a resistor, a capacitor, a diode mixer, and a meter (and a lot of plumbing)
If you'd like better antennas around that range, yet again, just ask a ham radio guy. Its a very awkward freq band where dishes, and most importantly dish feeds, are huge compared to 10 or 24 GHz band, but a loop yagi like you'd use at 2 GHz or lower would be ridiculously small. The microwave ham radio contester guys seem to like horn antennas at that band so couple it into a moderately large waveguide and attach the (homemade) waveguide to a (homemade) horn antenna.
Transcom sells a nice well over 30 dBmW MMIC for that same freq band... you can buy a kit from minikits in australia, the EME141-5800, the bare chip is like $20.
Some ham radio work shows you don't need the fancy 4 layer weird oshpark material for workable stuff in that general freq range. http://www.w1ghz.org/MBT/multiband.htm
As an interesting extreme opposite comparison, there was a B-29-ish era chirp radar altimeter for aircraft landing which was almost entirely mechanical. A little buzzer/motor thing varied the size of a resonant cavity by a little bit, and the resulting audio signal was turned into a voltage / altitude using something like a capacitor/resistor bridge. So one vacuum tube, a resistor, a capacitor, a diode mixer, and a meter (and a lot of plumbing)
If you'd like better antennas around that range, yet again, just ask a ham radio guy. Its a very awkward freq band where dishes, and most importantly dish feeds, are huge compared to 10 or 24 GHz band, but a loop yagi like you'd use at 2 GHz or lower would be ridiculously small. The microwave ham radio contester guys seem to like horn antennas at that band so couple it into a moderately large waveguide and attach the (homemade) waveguide to a (homemade) horn antenna.