@ptpt52 Your suggestion, as much as it's appreciated (and thank-you for it) as a workaround, is still a work-around at best. It should not be so cumbersome to simply connect to a WiFi network in STA mode.

Could one imagine having to tell one's grandma that in order to connect her phone to a WiFi network, first she has to scan it and then once she has figured out the channel of AP she wants to connect to she then has to go set a fixed channel connection? And then if/when the AP changes channels because it's set to 'auto' (and perhaps it restarts), she has to go do that all over again.

I'm not actually even sure how I would do a fixed-channel configuration with travelmate.

So my previous question/comment was really more about the progress of finding a proper solution to this problem, rather than how can one jury rig around it.