Helmet - I think Nick just posted the definitive statements about ground-effect.
But to elaborate a bit on a different subject, you say:
"Pull back on which stick? Cyclic will have the effect of increasing pitch on the advancing blade, and decreasing it on the retreating blade. Collective will increase the pitch of all blades, but that doesnt necessarily cause the nose to pitch up. So how is this like a fixed wing?"
Look, a lot of pilots are confused about how rotors produce their lift, and I don't claim to be an expert. I'm certainly no Ray Prouty, but I do read him from time to time and try to understand his oft-confusing words, diagrams and formulae.
Pulling back on the cyclic does increase the pitch of the advancing blade, yes. And that tilts the rotor disk to a more nose-up position, yes. But increasing the pitch of the advancing blade does not produce a dramatic increase in total lift of the rotor (and remember, any lift that is generated is actually being produced on one side of the aircraft). Without a significant increase in total lift, the ship would merely change its attitude and not its rate of descent. But we know that we can reduce our rate of descent to zero if we like, even with the collective at flat pitch. Go fast enough in an auto and you could probably do a loop (my theory - don't quote me). How is this possible? What causes this tremendous increase in lift?
If we had a big round flat piece of plywood mounted above us, it would still have the properties of a fixed-wing in that if we increased its angle-of-attack with respect to the relative wind, it would produce lift (and downwash). The spinning rotor has solidity and thus does the same thing.
I just saw a movie of a wind tunnel test. In horizontal flight, smoke blowing toward a rotor went up and over the leading edge of the disk, just as it would when encountering an airplane's wing. Once it past the mast, the smoke was accellerated downward through the aft portion of the disk. The airflow (smokeflow?) looked very similar to the way we visualise a wing working in profile.
Like I said, I'm no expert, and maybe I'm completely off-base here. But I do know that even in autorotation, a rotor in forward flight works very much like an airplane wing, even if it's not exactly like one in the mechanics of it. As such, it will produce a certain amount of downwash. From there, we refer to Nick Lappos' post just above.