Diana Foster

i run SO2R with an FT-991A as the second radio mostly because it was cheap and i already had it, and honestly the 7300 would be fine for that role too. you dont need the second radio to be your best radio, its mostly doing search and pounce or listening for mults while you run on the primary.
the antenna isolation thing is real though. i have my hexbeam on the main rig and a wire dipole on the secondary and they're oriented differently which helps but i still use the Array Solutions bandmaster filters and they made a huge difference. without them on 40 meters running the primary would completely wipe out anything the second radio was hearing on the same band which kind of defeats the whole point.
one thing nobody really talks about is the mental load. like physically setting it up is solvable, its the operating technique that takes forever to get smooth. your brain has to process two things basically simultaneously and it feels really unnatural at first. i still make more dupe calls when im trying to do SO2R compared to single radio. but in a contest like SS or CQ WW where mults really matter it genuinely helps.

yeah the simplex transition is always the one that bites people. we did a drill a few years back where we deliberately killed the repeater about 30 minutes in without warning and half the group just kind of... went silent. they didnt know what frequency to move to, didnt have a pre-planned simplex channel in their radios, some were even trying to reach the repeater input thinking it was a technical issue. total chaos for maybe 10 minutes until someone thought to announce a fallback on 146.52.
after that we added a requirement that every member has at least three local simplex freqs programmed and we do a short simplex-only portion of every monthly net now, even if its just passing one piece of traffic. makes a big difference over time. the other thing we found was that HF capability was almost completely untapped in our group — we had maybe two or three people who could actually operate HF under stress and get traffic out to the section. thats a gap worth addressing if your county is similar.

yeah the doppler thing is huge, especially on a short 8 minute pass. on fo-29 the shift across a full pass can be something like +/- 10 kHz on the uplink which sounds like a lot but you kind of get used to compensating as the bird tracks across the sky. the trick most people do when they dont have computer control is to pre-set the downlink to where you expect the center of the passband to be at your target part of the pass (usually near AOS or max elevation depending on what youre trying to do) and then just manually twitch the dial as you track. its a bit of an art form.
also the eggbeater is fine for FM birds but for linear transponders a lot of people find it undershoots on the link budget unless its built really well and has a preamp on the downlink. what are you using for the uplink side, same antenna? because if youre running like 5 watts into an omni on the uplink you might just not be getting enough into the transponder to pull your signal out of the noise on the way down. its a tight system.

honestly i was in the same boat when i first started and the thing that helped me most was just doing it wrong a couple times lol. like i jumped in at the wrong moment once and the net control just gently redirected me and that was it. no drama. most net controls are pretty patient especially with newer folks.
one thing i'll add is if you're ever unsure just listen to a few nets on something like a websdr before you check in, sometimes hearing other people mess up the timing and seeing how it gets handled is more useful than any explanation. also some nets have their procedures posted online if its an affiliated club net, worth looking up.

yeah im in a similar boat, did my first EME contact about 8 months ago with a single long boom yagi and a medium PA. Q65B is just ridiculous in a good way, like i could not believe what was getting through. honestly the hardest part for me wasnt the RF side it was getting the az/el control working reliably and making sure my system clock was synced properly because if youre even a few seconds off it messes up the decode. the moon-net mailing list is still pretty active for scheduling, dont overlook that.

that waiting thing is so real and i dont think anyone really prepares new operators for it. i've been doing ARES stuff for close to 12 years now and i still tell people — bring a book, bring snacks, charge everything twice. the activation where you're slammed with traffic every 10 minutes is the exception not the rule. most of the time you're sitting there monitoring and drinking bad shelter coffee hoping nothing major happens, which honestly is the best case scenario anyway.
sounds like you handled it well though. that moment of freezing when you get your first real message is completely normal, everyone goes through it. the important thing is your training kicked in and you got it done. the ICS stuff feels like overkill when youre sitting in a classroom but when you're actually in an EOC and someone's using the terminology it all clicks.
keep going to the nets, keep your quals current, and if your EC does any go-kit exercises or simulated emergency tests make sure you show up for those. SET in the fall is good practice too if your section does a serious one.