>My problem is that the output of my transceiver is 50 ohms
>unbalanced and dipoles are an inherently ~73 ohm balanced
>antenna.

The way around that is to use an antenna that is around 5/8 lambda long, 
which gives very close to 50 ohm feed, but does have some inductive or 
capacitive reactance (cannot remember which for that length).

>I want to connect the transceiver to the antenna in the lowest
>loss way I can so I'd prefer to avoid using a balun if at all
>possible. Weight is also a consideration here.
>
>Is it "good enough" to connect the signal and ground to the two arms
>of the dipole or is there some better low-loss, low-weight way I can
>do this?

I would 'just' do a dipole at 5/8 lambda, and not worry about the vswr. But 
you may want to look at ham radio books for matching stubs as used for 2 
metre and higher frequency dipoles, which have a matching stub using a bit 
of coax. It should be possible to do something similar using more copper 
tape. 

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