It has always worked for me, often without even turning it off. On occasion it has taken a couple of tries. When I run into situations where the airport hardware is disabled, or whatever is happening, I've just opened up the terminal, cd'd to /system/library/extensions/ and typin in a sudo kextunload and then a sudo kextload for the appleairport2.kext driver, and it's back to normal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin L. Darroch - PO Box 2715, South Hedland WA 6722 - +61 421 503 966 robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - robin@xxxxxxxxxxx - robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx