Answer
Configuring the ST60 for hostapd to take advantage of it's max data rate requires a bit of setup. For hostapd to take advantage it has to know all the capabilities of the radio which can be pull from 'iw list'. One will need to convert the capabilities from 'iw list' to ht_capab and vht_capab. To help do this conversion reference the hostapd full config documentation.
Note: hostapd is not officially supported at this time, but wpa_supplicant setup as an AP is support via the sterling-supplicant which can be obtained here: Sterling-60.
Below is a sample working configuration for the ST60.
# hostapd configuration ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd ctrl_interface_group=0 interface=wlan0 driver=nl80211 # IEEE 802.11 ssid=hostAPD hw_mode=a channel=149 max_num_sta=12 auth_algs=1 # DFS country_code=US ieee80211d=1 ieee80211h=1 # IEEE 802.11n ieee80211n=1 ht_capab=[HT40+][LDPC][SHORT-GI-20][SHORT-GI-40][RX-STBC1][DSSS_CCK-40][MAC-AMSDU-3839] # IEEE 802.11ac ieee80211ac=1 vht_oper_chwidth=1 vht_capab=[MAX-MPDU-3895][RXLDPC][SHORT-GI-80][RX-STBC-1][TX-ANTENNA-PATTERN][RX-ANTENNA-PATTERN] vht_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=155 # IEEE 802.11i wpa=2 wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_passphrase=password1 rsn_pairwise=CCMP