@stangri, no suggestions at the moment. Initially I thought it wouldnt work since you left out " option encryption 'none' ". You could have missed that copying into your post, so I tried without on my own setup. This showed some other interesting facts.
@nbd: even if I put " encycryption 'authsae' " the generated file for wpa_supplicant (/var/run/wpa_supplicant-wlan1.conf) will not have the encryption set. I could simply connect from an "Open" meshpoint (without any encryption) to my "Closed" meshpoint.
network={
ssid="RichieMeshUp"
key_mgmt=NONE
mode=5
fixed_freq=1
frequency=5745
ht40=1
vht=1
max_oper_chwidth=0
beacon_int=100
}