Asjad
I dont undersatnd your comment that "the built in antenna is rather pointless". What do you mean by pointless?
The dipole.
You are correct, each leg of the dipole is 1/4 wavelength long at the operating frequency.
If you connect the dipole to a length of coax cable, the centre of the coax will then connect to the "antenna terminal" of your radio,and the screen of the coax will connect to "chassis" of the radio, probably the 0v earthplane on the circuit board.
Yes this antenna will transmit and receive well.
A dipole is directional, you will get very little signals of the ends of the dipole and strong signals off the sides (at right angles to the run of the wire).
Yes a 50Mhz dipole will be about 3 metres long, it can be made shorter by inserting a coil into each leg of the dipole, or, by winding the whole of each leg into the form of a coil.
When you start doing tricks like this, you are into a whole new area and need some test equipment to adjust the antenna for good performance.
By the way, a shorthened dipole will not work as well as a full size one.
There are numerous books on antennas published by the RSGB (
www.rsgb.org) and the ARRL (
www.arrl.org).
JimB