you said > Many illustrations of helicopters in forward flight depict a downward flow of air through both the front and rear parts of the rotor. If you've flown for any length of time you probably intuitively know that this is incorrect. In wind tunnel footage that I have seen, smoke blowing at a translated rotor goes right up and over the front part of the disk and does not come down through it (transverse flow, anyone?)
this must be just in translation, inflow roll (transverse flow effect) happens because the front most part of the disc is cutting clean air, not paddeling in a vortex which would cause the smoke to go over the front of the disk.
http://www.dynamicflight.com/aerodyn...lational_lift/
http://www.dynamicflight.com/aerodyn...erse_flow_eff/
you said > 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).
pulling back on the cyclic does produce lift! because some of the total rotor thrust that was being used for overcoming parasidic drag (forward flight) now is producing lift aswell. aslo pulling back radicaly reduces the induced flow (instead of the air coming in from the top, it now wants to come in from underneith) so angle of attack is incraesed. all this lift on the blades causes them to cone, aswell as autorotative force increasing, so the rrpm will increase. i would say airspeed is traded for total rotor thrust and rrpm.