Bear in mind, and it may have just been the turn of phrase you used, but carrier-borne aircraft shouldn't "settle" onto the deck. They come DOWN. Hard.
Once you set up AOA, Pitch, and Power, keep it all the same, well maybe vary power a bit to control you vertical flight path, down to impact. Navy pilots NEVER flare. They PUT the plane on the deck, ship or shore.
It's called a "controlled crash" for a reason, after all
Javier's Nimitz and Ike V2 is the base carrier many use. I do. I use it the most often. It's certainly old, but one of the best. You would be amazed, however, at the number of other, more recent, carriers out there. The HUD only recognizes certain of them, however. Javier's Nimitz is the primary carrier for most, that's for sure. Glad you got everything working right, though
By the bye, if I may be so bold, I strongly recommend NOT adding any add-on ship formations of any sort to the base AICarriers.cfg file. Use the conf.d folder, and have the various add-on's .cfg files in a sub-folder under it. That way, you can swap them in and out, and you don't wind up with a SHFT+J menu with 10 pages you need to search through for the ship you want to use at the moment. Just a thought.
Also, remember to keep the plane's Gross Weight under 33K lbs to land on the boat.
You need 35 kts Wind Over the Deck (WOD), as well.
I get the boat set and moving with AICarriers, then add the 10 Kts wind down the angle deck's heading to make the 35 Kts required. The carriers travel at 25 Kts by default, and there's a way to edit the boat's .cfg file to make the ship go the right speed to make the correct WOD, but I'm lazy, and just use the weather settings built into the sim to accomplish it. That way, I don't have to remember which ships I've modified and which not.
Enjoy! The v18.3 certainly is a real joy to fly, isn't it??
Pat☺