Finally able to solve the problem. The aic8800 wifi modules and others associated with the wifi driver are deleted when upgrading the kernel.
I found Debian packages on radxa's github site downloaded the firmware and usb modules and then reinstalled them from the /tmp directory
after kernel upgrade but before rebooting.
While this does work, it is a sloppy hack. It seems to me that there ought to be some way to retain the wifi drivers on upgrade, but it will take a more knowledgeable person to do that.
The same hack allows the wifi on the Rock-2A to survive a kernel upgrade. Wired Ethernet of the Rock-2A survives a kernel upgrade without issue.