As some of you know I've been learning VOR to VOR flying, and I was just wondering does the wind affect it any differently than just using nav hold?

The autopilot should track the VOR radial, so it should correct for any wind.

Wind correction is via the Wind Triangle (here).AdaCalc, the free air calculator by Herve Sors (here), includes Wind Triangle computations.Cheers,- jahman.

The autopilot is fairly straight-forward. It works by computing an "error" value, and then applies a "control law" to physically drive a control surface via servo mechanism.In this case, the "error" is determined by measuring the difference between desired VOR radial (as set by OBS or CRS knob) and actual VOR radial (as computed by the nav receiver). This error term is also displayed to the pilot as a deviation. Note that the cause of the error (such as wind, airspeed, compass error, etc) is not determined. This error is constantly computed.The "control law" has three main operations. First is proportional. The larger the value of the error, the more control is provided. This alone can work, but has response problems. The other two operations try to improve on this. The second is derivative. This looks at how fast the error is changing. The faster it changes, the more control is provided. The third is integral. This looks at how long the error has lasted. The longer it lasts, the more control is provided. The amount of gain (size of the control compared to size of error) can be tweaked.For lateral autopilot, such as NAV mode, the control is sent to a roll servo which causes aileron deflection. This will effectively cause a change in aircraft heading (where it is pointing) which then results in a decreasing error.scott s..

Since we're going tech, that's called a PID - Proportional-Integral-Derivative controller (here).The general subject is Control Theory (here), and the math can quickly get very fancy.Cheers,- jahman.

The old ID-249 indicator had a circle (doughnut) at the end of the bearing needle. The pilot would fly the aircraft to keep the doughnut over the vertical deviation needle. This would allow for any wind drift. The more wind, the further off the radial track you were and higher crab angle.Dave