You're an american soldier then right? Just want to be sure I'm not helping just anyone in Afghanistan in a tent build a remote operated device.
Well, you could ghetto test it, get some headphones, and connect the wires between ground and the signal pin on the remote, you should get a choppy buzz, like "BZZZT ZZ ZZ....BZZZT ZZ ZZ", then do the same on the receiver once you've wired in the transmitter, it should sound the same, if it's just random ticks and the occasional buzz then you're just getting static, but that means it's on. Given that, you can test the not gate with two leds, one from input to ground and one from output to ground. If you connect the input pin to high the input led will come on and the output will go off, connect it to ground it should do the opposite.