I'll hopfully have a model built soon. Plus then I can test my "petal airbrake" idea (see other long post).
For now I just have the drawing in the pics section of this beast. ;D

After a conversation with a friend last night, I've revised the "airbrake/flap" idea to get rid of the troublesome round track and the "weathervane" completely.
The new idea looks something like a flower. Picture the dome with petals around it. When the wind hits from a side, those petals (which are already pointed up slightly) are forced into a upward position and form a flap like the airbreaks on a plane wing. The petals in the other side of the dome of course stay in their rest position and also catch the wind comming over the dome creating even more downward force. All automatic and very few moving parts that can fail (unlike the tracked "weathervane" idea from before). A spring pushs the petal back down enough for gravity to kick in to return the petal to it's rest position.

Plus I just love the irony of using the wind power to work against the wind itself. ;) lol

Houses fly through the air in a tornado due to be ripped apart from the inside out. The low pressure center of the vortex causes the relative higher pressure still in the house to push out. A few breaks here and there and the wind pushing does the rest. Houses aren't built to be blown up like balloons. :D

I think you may be misreading Bernoulli a bit:
"The Bernoulli principle is expressed by an equation (known as Bernoulli’s equation) which states that for a given volume of fluid, the total energy remains constant due to the principle of the conservation of energy. This means that When a fluid is in relative motion, the energy is split into the ‘parts’. The sum of these parts will not exceed a certain value which will remain constant as long as the external conditions do not change."
-From www.forumula1.net/2006/f1/f...rodynamics

Also from Wikipedia:
"It may be misunderstood to be that a change in velocity simply causes a change in pressure; the Bernoulli principle does not make any such statement."

To create lift, the air must be split (top and bottom of a wind or dome in this case). The air going over the top must travel faster than the air going under due to the longer distance. The faster moving air is, by Bernoulli, now of lower pressure that the slower air (under the dome). The object (dome) being between these two pressure areas is forced towards the lower pressure are to rebalance the presssures (lift).
Air simply traveling over a bump (dome) does not create any pressure differences as far as any lift goes. The wind is simply directed around the bump. At that point your only worry is direct sideways forces from the wind hitting the object (sailing).

The wind under the dome is my curse. I should be able to cut most of it out with a "skirt" of sorts, it just can't drag as that would cause way too much dust to get kicked up. ;)