Did you try
iwconfig wlan0 txpower auto
or
iwconfig wlan0 txpower fixed
the man page indicates that one of those would enable power control, but it's not 100% clear which.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:50 AM, Duane Attaway <dattaway@dattaway.net> wrote:
Unfortunately, the iwconfig txpower setting doesn't seem to lower the power.  I don't need to transmit to the entire neighborhood.  And when I send large files for half an hour or more, I need to reboot by taking out the battery to reset the wireless module.  It gets that hot.

The reception on the card is quite good too.  Very good signal to noise ratio.

localhost dattaway # iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"ilikecheesereallyido"
         Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:14:BF:04:F6:2F
         Bit Rate=12 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm
         Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
         Encryption key:off
         Power Management:off
         Link Quality=40/100  Signal level:-76 dBm  Noise level=-102 dBm
         Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
         Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

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