Troubleshooting! First thing to do is to reduce everything to seperate units and make sure each of them works. So:

-Plug your receiver into a servo and see if the transmitter operates the servo.

You said: no power seems to be getting to the rx and therefore nothing will work

Try running the receiver on its own
battery and see if that solves the problem.

Things often dont work the first time. Often the answer is easy but it does not appear that way. (Ive been unhappy with a robot that fails to respond only to find that that the transmitter and receiver cystals were not on the same frequency). Your problem may be an easy one you have not yet cracked. Keep trying.