Psikelly,
Here's a web site, it's a video, that will show you how the transmitter works, balancing, pitch cure, setup and final adjustments.
http://www.funscale.com/Bladebuild1.html
The files are long, about 30 meg+ each. There are 5 videos, it's worth the download to watch this guy.
Collective pitch, put simpily, means that you have the contol of the pitch of the blade. Meaning you can add negative or positive pitch of the rotor blades. In normal flight you don't use negative pitch, negative is used for inverted flight.
There are two modes you use from the transmitter, normal mode or idle-up mode. Normal mode gives you from 0 percent pitch to about 9 or 10 percent pitch at full throttle.. In this mode the throttle stick also controls the head speed.
In the idle-up mode, the main rotor always spins at top rpm. In this mode you only control the pitch with the throttle stick (left stick). Read a lot and do the research, it's a super fun hobby, but it's harder than it looks on some of the videos with guys doing 3D flying..
Dave / Choppersrule