I understand what the Mach number is. It's the gauge itself I'm seriously struggling with. Here's a closeup of the air speed indicator:
That outer edge to the right, upper area is from 0 to 200 knots which is the big, long, white line at the end of that section.
Once you pass 200 knots, you start having to look into the open section on the inside bottom of the guage. This guy is doing about 280 knots on this image.
That carries you up to about 600 knots I think before the outer Mach gauge comes into play. It's almost as if they really didn't care if you knew how fast you were going if you weren't hauling some serious ass.
It's also crowded right next to very similar looking gauges in the cockpit. When you glance down this is what I see:
I'm sure it will come with experience, but it is so easy for me to look at the wrong gauge it's laughable. Seriously, all 4 look virtually identical so I wind up having to look 3 or 4 times to figure out my air speed.
One thing I do love a lot about the F14 though, is its ability to literally go ballistic. It has so much power you can hit the afterburners, turn up 80 degrees and go. I can get off the runway to 35,000 feet in a quick hurry.
I can't do that in any of the Russia aircraft and even the F15 struggles to match it in climbing like that.