Can i force Client mode to use 2.4Ghz band?

New user here, trying to build up a thin client with a bunch of VMs to help me teach at conferences. They are Dell 7070s with Intel wifi cards. I need the card to both act as AP and client at the same time. (I have OpenWRT running in a container and passed the wifi card to it). I can get both to work at the same time as long as the client stays on 2.4Ghz (as i come to learn dual band cards means "one at a time though").

So conference centers where they use one SSID for both bands will present a problem, as the wifi card jumps to 5Ghz and then breaks AP mode, since AP mode isn't supported at 5Ghz (or at least i can't make it work).

So am i missing something in the setup where i can force the client config to stay on 2.4Ghz? I tried locking to the BSSID of the 2.4Ghz AP, but it seems if band steering is on then they fight each other and never connect at all.

Intel wifi cards suppoort only AP in 2.4ghz band, check with iw list
You need mt76-s, one per band.

As in an ad hoc network?