did you try it with out the servos installed, I would of thought the receiver would of started to blink with the bind plug in, how is the receiver battery as I am thinking this is for nitro, and thinking the instructions say to do the receiver first then radio, afterwards remove the bind plug

just looking over the instructions, looks like you should be able to power the receiver in any of the channels, just check the polarity so it will power up

and really have no answer if it is good or bad, I have one in my crawler, works great and have a 3s for racing