So here is what I've done on Banklers 5.10 mission to make it work with f18.
1. Spawn on Catapult and go around and land (it throws errors for every time it would normally give you feedback. Just hit Enter on your keyboard to resume.)
2. Once on deck and kind of lined up on catapult one, contact ATC and request start-up, then request take-off. Blast Doors should come up but you don't connect to catapult. Then abort takeoff and Blast Doors start to go down. Get your launch bar ready and hit "U" on keyboard and it hooks up.
Hope it works for ya'll! :thumbup: