No idea. Pure speculation. I wonder if and when it’ll be released?
I’ve ridden it. It turns better than the 120, but is slower. Seems like a really good parawing foil. Lift easy. Rips turns and glides well, but def not a race wing! Interesting but a bit slow for Maliko. Probably epic for gorge.
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Lift Foils: Abandoned analog foiling?
I’m about to jump in to foiling from a surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding background. I have always considered Lift to go to system for me. I always liked the clean design/look and simplicity of tails making entry more straightforward. However, it seems they now focus on e-foiling and don’t seem to be targeting the prone surfer. I see foil sizes for sale that are not on the website which also includes new foils I know are out in the water. Are they discontinuing the model lines and waiting for them to sell out. I am also missing the marketing for any products outside of e-foiling. My concern is that I will be buying into a system that won’t be supported in the near future. I may just be undereducated on the issue , can anyone straighten me out.
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Just my 2cents. I think they are just sold out of some wings - probably waiting for a shipment. They seem to rearrange their website every few months, for example the 120 was off their site for a while and then back on. The new wings are probably protos that aren’t out yet. They just dropped a super high mod M6 mast (which feels great btw), which signals to me that they are still committed to non powered foils.
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I did see on another thread the Lift founder stated they ran into some tough times with logistics/supply chain etc, and they were working to catch back up and acknowledged they dropped the ball a bit but were working to regain the trust etc.
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Yea I saw the same thing.
A lot of mumbo jumbo here, but he acknowledges the issues: https://youtu.be/NIvifh5nMhM?si=jgIef5Bo-MyprSYs
I imagine that the tariff situation coinciding with a new product launch was tricky. FWIW, I had a mast warrentied a few weeks ago, and their customer service was very responsive.
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Thanks for your post because man I’m in the same place and also on the 180. That said, good advice from a friend helped. My turns were way too wide. I put the carve tail on and like it better than the glide. Turns quicker. But yeah this shit is hard! Haha. Stick with it and spend money on help not gear as a start.
also, I don’t think lift has given up on non assist foiling. Florence brothers are a big investment and they likely have no interest in efoil. I think it’s a transitional year and good new stuff is coming.
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Just about a year (minus a few months for mostly non-foil related injuries) into prone foiling pretty much every day with waves in SD. I’ve been running the 150 hax for almost all of that time, and I think I’ve finally realized there’s something weird with how this wing behaves in the surf. Switching to the 120 has been the right call in nearly all situations with waves even just powerful enough to ride on a log.
Anyone else surfing these wings experience this? Even at 175 lbs I find the 150 to just be so much less predictable, despite being a similar AR to the 120. It has all this weird yaw and bucking around that makes me feel like I’m often fighting it more than riding it. The 120 by comparison feels so much better on drops, turns, and while kicking out of waves to connect to the next set wave. It also doesn’t randomly yaw out on me when approaching the top end like the 150 does. I don’t know if this is just a characteristic to expect for wings past a certain span, or what. I only really enjoy the 150 in waves that couldn’t feasibly be surfed at all.
To the guy wondering about the 148 havoc, we have a guy in our group who rides it nearly all the time as his main wing in most conditions. He loves it. I’ve tried it and it feels too different from the HA wings for me to love it in one or two rides, but rolling it into turns is admittedly much smoother. He gets at least 5+ waves per takeoff most rides.
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Heard an older winger say the lift foils are like riding a rocking horse. I kind of agree. Even though I have ridden lift a bunch. They’re not the most pitch stable. The older masts were wobbly too.
Demo everything you can get your hands on.
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Agree with Hdip, I would wonder if some of that waywardness is from the mast with the wider span exacerbating the issue. Regardless agree that in almost all situations the 120 is the superior wing.
Lots of great riders leaving the Lift team, most of them after riding the foils for a long time. Andrew Gibbons, Patrick Rebstock, Shep etc. Seems quite a few good foilers around home are all jumping ship as well. Most seem to be jumping to F4 in this part of the world.
I’ve only ever ridden Lift foils, other than an early Naish set up. It’s all I know and I love foiling so the foils must be sick, right? I’ve never questioned my choice of foil, until I recently started contemplating spending $3K Aus on the new M6 mast ( to get the length of mast that I am after for proning). With that particular outlay, on top of whatever I have spent to obtain 4 x front wings, 5 x tails and a 28" high modulus mast for DW, I am basically committing to the brand for at least the next 5 years. Which is probably fine. Unless there are genuine advantages in range etc with some of these other brands.
Why the mass exodus from Lift? Did they concentrate all their funds and focus on the Florence relationship at the expense of these other great foilers? Would make sense, especially if you have a firm eye on tapping the new foil entrant/ surfer market.
Or is the money all being steered into the e-foil side of things? That is one part of Lifts branding that really doesn’t do much for me personally, as someone who has surfed all my life and associate more with grassroots surfing, rather than the mega rich white-boat set.
I know there is hype and marketing at play. Couple of years back it was Code, and now (here at least) it seems it may be F4..It’s interesting to observe within my own attitude that team riders play more of a role in influencing my thinking that I’d previously have cared to admit. I guess if you are spending large (relative to me as a father of three kids and single income) amounts of coin you want to be sure you are spending it in the right place.
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I’m with ya, I’ve been riding Lift for years and have enjoyed being able to take a set-it-forget-it approach to the foil part of these sports for a while. One less variable.
But gradually watching almost all the Lift riders I know in the gorge jump ship to Code, KT, F4, etc. definitely has me demoing gear and considering a change. They aren’t team riders, but the consistent feedback I hear is that new foils are strictly better in at least a few dimensions, without giving anything up. At least for the wind sports audience, Lift was really cutting edge for a long time, but they’ve been off that mark for a while now.
As expensive switching is, feels hard to leave performance on the table that otherwise might “cost” me hundreds of hours of practice time to unlock!
What type of foiling do you do? Lift is fine. Others may be better. I sold off my lift gear a couple years ago and haven’t missed it. Can’t afford new gear at the moment anyway though.
How did you find the other gear when you demo’d it? Are you mostly winging?
As far as the performance advantage factor, I understand what you are saying. If I only prone foiled I’d probably not be asking the question of the foils at all. I think the foils surf great, not that I’ve got much to compare them to. With SUP downwind however I feel as though any advantage is an advantage that could be worth having.
For the time being I’ll remain on Lift, but I’m thinking long and hard about that new mast purchase.
I prone 85 percent of the time.
DW SUP time will increase as it becomes more pleasure and less pain. Getting ok little runs on foil now and planning on doing a lot of that this summer.
No wind assisted disciplines. Yet.
Could well be that this next line of Florence wings will be right there on par with the other latest offerings from other brands. Cool my heels and wait for reports on their release I guess.
I am in the same boat, mostly been loyal to Lift since I started my foil journey many years ago (back when lift was called MHL).
I mostly prone, kite here and there, etc. Current daily driver is 32 M2, 120HA and 20 Carve.
Recently I have also contemplated jumping ship. I have demoed a fair amount of armstrong gear, some slingshot and other stuff. Nothing that 100% convinced me to make the move. I heard from some of the riders named above that the upcoming Hydrocraft gear is worth waiting for.
Still interested in the Uni agression, especially with the price drop on the masts, but I haven’t had the chance to try yet.
The 150HAX was my daily driver for about 1.5 years. I’m also in SoCal, mostly foiling around SanO. At 140LB, I never got the weird yaw or bucking bronco experience. I was using a FoilParts long adapter with KDTails. So the longer fuselage probably made my setup more pitch stable compared to a stock Lift setup. I would switch to the Lift 120HA if the surf got over CH, because I would get over foiled on the 150HAX. I was a lot more consistent getting double dips with 150HAX compared to the 120HA.
I recently sold the 150HAX and replaced it with the Axis Fireball 1070 (136sqin). The FB1070 turns similar to the 150HAX but has greatly improved pump and glide. I can also ride bigger waves on the FB1070 without getting overfoiled. I kept the 120HA for tow sessions.
I definitely agree with most of the points being made here. I have been loyal to Lift throughout my entire foiling journey. We used to have a large Lift community here on our local lake, Lake Austin, but it seems that many of the guys have switched over to Armstrong.
Recently, I was in the market for a new mast and found myself going back and forth between the M6 and switching to a completely different brand. In the end, I decided to find a middle ground and ordered the new Cedrus Forged alloy mast. Coming from the classic mast, I expect it to be a significant upgrade in stiffness. I couldn’t pass up the price, and considering the current situation with Lift regarding new wings, I really liked the idea of interchangeable mounts. I’ll be continuing to ride my Lift wings for a while longer, but I’m eager to see what Matt and his team will accomplish with Hydrocraft and the folks at Code/KT. Only time will tell!
Who cares if team riders are leaving? They’re brand-incentivized differently than consumers…
If you’re using it as litmus test of foil performance, just look at Zane Westwood? He’s still with Lift and is arguably one of the best surf foilers in the world… 
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Or the Florence brothers… although there may be some incentive for them in that deal.
Ive been burned by chasing hype in foiling a few times. My lift gear works great, feels good to ride, and their warranty service has been excellent any time Ive needed it.
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