I had the same issue today with a RFM69HW connected to a Wemos D1 Mini. The above solution worked, thank you so much. I had no idea what was going on.
I also have a RFM69W connected to a generic ESP12-E and with the same code I didn't need to reset. Seems to be hardware related.
Best posts made by Chris03
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RE: RFM69 not initialising (required reset could be the cause)