Just a quick update,

Linear Regulator

I looked at changing to a switch mode but after running some thermal simulations using the tools provided by the maker of some of the switching regulators I looked at predicted high temperatures. So for cost and convenience I'm keeping with the linear but am decreasing the input voltage from 9-12V to 6-9V. So far with 3 of the 4 cores disabled and radio enabled with a 6V PSU the SOC Doesn't read above 50 Degrees under stress. A great improvement.

Kersing Packet Forwarder

I still haven't been able to figure out why the packet forwarder is segfaulting when it goes to do a transmission, However I have now had the parts to build my second one so I can use that as a development one for now. Currently I have been using Ubuntu 16.04 with 4.11

I'm going to try with Debian Stretch which is the same OS that the RPi uses and we'll see if that works.