Hello,
I have Netgear R6100 with installed LEDE 17.01.04. Problem is with 5GHz WiFi - "Wireless is disabled or not associated". During radio configuration by hostapd I saw some errors in logs. https://pastebin.com/0XreDECc. Router has installed hostapd-common, but when I tried to install hostapd_2016-12-19-ad02e79d-7_mips_24kc I recive error caused by conflict with wpad. Both wpad and hostapd_2016... was compiled by myself, not downloaded.
There are a bunch of "variants" of the hostap-provided functionality. Only one can be installed at a time. If you're building your own code, incorporating one into your image is a good approach, as it reduces the overall image size. You could "delete" one from your ROM and install another, but that doesn't free up the space. That might be a good exploratory approach to decide if the change in firmware improves your situation.
Most of the "current" (or at least somewhat current) UCI configuration options are at https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/basic It's not an exhaustive list; consult the above shell scripts as "ground truth" as to what is implemented.