kfunk

at launch i set my nav-ball to orbit. i burn straight up until my orbital prograde vector is 45° above the horizon, then maintain that by yawing toward the horizon until my apopasis hits about 40km then i burn along my prograde vector until app his about 60km then i head for the horizon. i have good luck with it and it's basically independent of the ship you're flying, although you have to mind the staging. if I go from a high TWR to a low TWR sometimes that oribital prograde marker will fall faster than I want it to.

if you're having difficulty rendezvous-ing with a circular orbit, doing it in a highly eliptical orbit will be nearly impossible. in relation to your unmanned probe being difficult to land, there are 'precision' controls which you can turn on with caps lock. it knocks down the amount of input you get for a given control and may be helpful in situations like that. it doesn't take a lot of power to get from Mun orbit back to kerbin. i like to burn prograde when my rocket is between mun & kerbin, usually can get home with minimal fuel. wobble/spin problems can sometimes be an SAS problem. too much/too little. try turning it on/off and see if that helps. when you're trying to rendezvous in orbit the idea is to close the gap with orbital maneuvers to a few km (i like < 5, but you can do it from 10 if you have the fuel) then use your docking controls on final approach. if you have craft 1 in a circular orbit and it's 'ahead' of you, you'll need a lower orbit to catch up, if it's behind, you'll want a higher orbit to slow down and allow it to catch up to you. for 27km distance you'd want your orbit AP/PE to be within 5 of the target craft. the last poster was right in that you should find a video that shows how it works, its a multi part step. once you figure it out you'll wonder why it was ever difficult at all.

i only usually use nuclear engines for transfer burns. when you plot your maneuver node it'll tell you the burn time, you need to start it so that you do half the burn before and half the burn after. if you're getting burn times that are too long you have a few options, you can use the oberth effect, performing multiple burns at Pe, or you can go Kerbal on it and add MOAR BOOSTERS (or ... more nuclear engines as the case may be) hope this helps.

put the troubling decoupler at the top of the stack? stage 0? i know it's not pretty, but it should do what you want

i still don't see 7000 being enough... maybe i'm reading the map incorrectly 950 to break orbit, 1150 to intercept eeloo, 2100 to establish an orbit, 4200 total, double that to get home, 8400. 7000 should leave you stranded on some bizzare orbit in the middle of the kerbol system.

umbral raptor is correct on this. if you leave with 7000 m/s you'll have just enough power to slingshot past eeloo and go the way of the voyager (koyager? .. needs work) satellite.

from boating... approach the dock at the speed you'd like to hit the dock

are you just trying to get back to Kerbin? alignment is kind of unnecessary in that case. if you're trying to get into Mun orbit it would be ideal to time your departure so you're already aligned with Mun. Good luck!