When I was a kid, the record we cared about was flight time, not distance. We'd build planes that would gently circle and throw them straight up in the air. Distance seems to have more to do with the arm, to me.
If you liked paper airplanes as a kid and you're curious about the current state of the art for hand thrown aircraft, check out "discus launch" gliders (DLGs). These are radio-controlled models with a 1 or 1.5 meter wing span that are designed to be strong enough to be hand launched to almost 200ft but light and aerodynamic enough that they can be held aloft for a very long time by thermals.<p>There are some interesting design choices that have to be made between optimizing for maximum launch height and maximum glide performance.<p>Here's a video showing a recent model available in kit form: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0VXi_DBMM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0VXi_DBMM</a>
My dad was an aircraft engineer. When I was in 5th grade I won a paper plane contest for making a plane that flew out and came back to me (like he did in that video). That was just about the peak of my scientific achievements ️