Please give me some basic RF pointers

[tszaboo]

Seems sad that the FCC no longer seems to care about 27MHz unless they interfere with police or military. They are even slow to respond when given the operators exact address and times of day to be most likely active!! I do know of two folks who got jail time for threats of violence on the air and illegal power / antenna height. In both instances I assisted in triangulating to 1 city block, then zeroing in on foot!! One was a C.B. operator and the other had a ham license and was jamming repeaters and their control frequencies and control DTMF codes. The F.C.C. brought in the State Police agency for the threats of violence charges!! All illegal on air activities were digitally recorded and sent to the F.C.C. gathered over several months by local ham radio clubs.

Having done direction finding and interference hunting for many years: FCC has some very talented and dedicated people working for them, they're just severely understaffed.  Even cellular network operators whose (very expensive) licensed spectrum is being interfered with usually resort to self-help when it comes to interference issues, most of which are non-malicious.  My guess is that the threats of violence is what caused FCC to devote resources to the cases you mention - they have some very nice equipment and are very competent when it comes to documenting activities and locating emitters.

CB radio interference has been around since licenses were required to use CB.  Harmonic suppression is almost non-existent in many (homebrew and purchased) "linear" amplifiers, so the biggest "threat" is usually harmonics and intermod: pretty much no one cares about people using "excessive" power within the band.  There also are (well, were) plenty of freebanders who viewed CB as a kind of redneck* amateur radio, but they also rarely got any scrutiny from FCC.

*I've lived in the Carolinas almost my entire life and don't consider the word "redneck" a slur - it's just an .. unconventional ..  way of doing things

When you are understaffed, you can just employ the:
The AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile) is a tactical, air-to-surface anti-radiation missile designed to home in on electronic transmissions.
Solves the unintended radio transmissions in less than 5 minutes.

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

Getting back to the OP's equipment:   
The Antenna is a small loop designed for primarily Rx. It will probably survive a few milli watts of TX, More than that would burn something.   
I built a small loop for over 100 watts and it is quite expensive. You need good components that can survive perhaps 10,000 Volts.    They are very good antennas but require re tuning for even a few KHz change in freq.   
The amplifier is intended to be used with a QRP transmitter Radio that puts out a few watts. perhaps 5 Watts. This is a common thing, used by lots of people who have  QRP transmitters but sometimes want higher output. The quality of these amps varies greatly as does their spurious outputs.  Some are quite good, others not so good.   

About SSB vs AM transmitters.....you can run an amplifier at higher PEAK output on SSB  because you do not have a constant AM carrier present.  This is a common feature in normal HAM transceivers. This varies with the robustness of the final stage amplifier especially the output transistors.         

It used to be that CB radio 2nd harmonic would interfere with the TV Band,  Freq have changed and signal is also now digital (making the chance of any possible interference much less). Also most people use some version of cable rather than Over The Air signals.   
 A big danger of CB interference is in the 4th Harmonic which is in the Aeronautic Band 118.000 to 136.975 MHz. You can get into big trouble for this.   
There are CBers who put out Tens of Thousands of Watts, More than most commercial AM stations.  Some CBers even have 440 volt three phase electricity to their house for these illegal transmitters.
These folks usually only interfere with the use of the CB Band, since they can "STEP ON" or overwhelm lesser stations and the FCC does not seem to be interested.

[VSV_electron]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies.
No - I didn't buy that amp kit and that antenna I posted the links to. That was just a conversation starter and believe me or not - I've already learned some things from your helpful answers!
I especially appreciate your suggestions to get some early ARRL books from the 1980-s with complete RF projects. Please mention a few specific editions if possible.
... Just located couple ARRL handbooks in pdf (1986 and 1989) - is that what I need?