Basic Way To Describe A VOR?

I'm a CFII and here's how I explain it for people who have no understanding of the VOR.

Imagine a bicycle wheel with 360 spokes on it. The VOR transmitter is the hub and each spoke is one of the radials, or electronic beams generated by the VOR (not quite accurate, but suitable for our purposes). Each spoke is numbered for each degree on the compass, 0 through 359 (360 total).

If you want to know which radial you are on, you turn the OBS until the needle centers and the indicator says FROM. If you want to fly TO the station you tune and fly the reciprocal course. When you set the OBS to choose any other radial radial (spoke on the wheel) than the one you are on, and you turn to the heading you have selected on the OBS, you will simply be flying parallel to that spoke on the wheel. The CDI needle will indicate whether that spoke is to the left or right.

Choosing what intercept angle to fly in order to get to aparticular radial depends on your distance from the station. Explained this way, most people are able to visualize it. I hope it helps.

It is a radio station on the ground.

It sends out signals.

One signal is a pulse in all directions.

The other signal sweeps around in a circle.

The VOR receiver measures the time interval between signals.

The pilots sets it to display the direction to or from the station.

The direction is usually pretty close to the magnetic bearing to or from station.

The station declination is shown in the Airport/Facility Directory; it is usually close to the magnetic variation at the station.

VOR, short for VHF Omni-directional Radio Range, is a type of radio navigation system for aircraft. A VOR ground station broadcasts a VHF radio composite signal including the station's identifier in morse code (and sometimes a voice identifier), and data that allows the airborne receiving equipment to derive a magnetic bearing from the station to the aircraft (direction from the VOR station in relation to the Earth's magnetic North at the time of installation). wikipedia

http://www.truveotube.com/about/VOR

it is a radio navigation ground based unit, that transmitt signal which, when properly processed, provides "bearing from station" information.

then if interested you could go into te details with how the phase changes to incorporate the bearing information.

if describing its physical papearance, from what I have seen, the VOR station can be easily described as something similar to a giant computer processor heat radiator