I’ve done some more investigation and there seems to be some problem with the mmc1.
A short time after booting I get
[ 102.077151] sunxi-mmc 1c10000.mmc: send stop command failed
[ 102.077184] sunxi-mmc 1c10000.mmc: data error, sending stop command
And if I remove the 8189fs module and reload it
[ 572.371452] rtl8189fs: probe of mmc1:0001:1 failed with error -110
If I don’t see the mmc errors after startup I can happily remove and reload the 8189fs module as many times as I like and create a hotspot.
I’ll have a hunt around the armbian forums to see if this is known about and raise a bug if not.