Meader inductors in the antenna lead to small gain?
At least the explanation sounds like erroneous believe.
Meander antennas achieve poor performance because they are electrically small and have a low radiation resistance. In a first order they can be expected to behave similar as other antennas of same size. But the design details of an inductor loaded antenna matter to some extent, a cyclindrical wound coil may be slightly better.
Opposite currents isn't ideal, but meandering the antenna to obtain some resonance is better than trying to match an electrically short antenna. I have compared two cases here:
http://muehlhaus.com/support/mwo-app...g_network_loss
Both are meandered differently, and both have about the same antenna gain. However, the antenna that is better matched by more meander turns (closer to lambda/4) has less loss in the matching network, so overall it performs better.
