The main contribution of this paper is the implementation and experimental evaluation of thee radio power control algorithms for wireless sensor networks. We illustrate the necessity of lightweight radio power control algorithms for the deployment of wireless sensor networks in realistic situations. Furthermore, based on a simple loss model, we develop an algorithm that optimizes the transmit power while guaranteeing a desired packet error probability. The simple power control strategy is also compared with two other strategies in experiments using Tmote Sky sensor nodes. A component-based software implementation in the Contiki operating system is used.