I agree with David1357. I've used madwifi on many distros (Gentoo, Pclos, Arch, etc.), and it's always a crapshoot, at best. I've tried countless versions, including many from svn. Even if you get it working, it never lasts for long.

I finally got fed up, and went with ndiswrapper, and the winxp driver from the install cdrom that came with my atheros NIC. Problem solved- much better signal strength, no more lost connections, and no more wasted time doing re-configs when I update my distros. Once you get it set up, it works very reliably. There are a few tricks though- follow instructions you might find on various forums from those who have done it- it's not hard if you know the procedure. There's a good walk-through on the Gentoo forum.

Until the new ath5k and/or other new kernel drivers for atheros chipsets get more reliable, I highly recommend going with ndiswrapper. You won't be sorry.