Wing Foiling for Windsurfers - Tips and hacks and bad habits to avoid!?

As someone who came from windsurfing I found this recent video to be very insightful.

In windsurfing you focus on maximizing power from the sail to produce speed. In the video, he empathizes riding the foil, not the wing for wingfoiling. Use the wing as a tool just to get on foil and stay on foil.

That's the standard Stinkbug start

Good advices! I been using this metod since beginning! Best way to get up IMO!

I'm a former windsurfer who did 5-10 sessions of windfoiling before swapping to wingfoiling. I'm now a beginner/intermediate who can gybe and is starting to tack. Lots of great advice here so I'll just say four things.

1) Footstraps: I found putting the front footstraps on the board was quite intuitive for me and provided a bunch of benefits, like getting the board out of the water when pumping, staying on the board when it was choppy, transferring power into forward motion (especially in chop), recovering from touchdowns and when stuffing the nose. It also helped learn toeside riding. Once I cracked that I took the straps off again and have been riding strapless since. I recommend setting up the front straps to be quite long (i.e. the outer holes) so that you can wiggle your foot forward and backward while still in the strap.
2) Toeside riding: I don't think anything in windfoiling transfers to toeside riding. I found that getting up and foiling heelside was pretty intuitive but if I made it around a gybe I wouldn't be able to ride toeside for more than like a second - I'd basically just fall off immediately. It eventually just clicked, but having the front strap on the board helped me control the board even if my front foot is lifting at the heel. You definitely want to learn toeside riding because you can't really gybe without it, so I think it makes sense to really focus on learning it.
3) Footswap: When gybing you probably instinctively want to footswap when coming through the gybe. This isn't gonna work like it does with windsurfing. Stick to riding out toeside and then once you can ride toeside for some time, start learning the footswap.
4) Foil safety: with windfoiling you've got the benefit of the mast & boom which effectively keeps the bottom side of the board i.e. the foil away from you. You don't have this benefit with wingfoiling and you can easily have the board go one way and you go the other way and fall towards the foil. It's pretty scary and I don't really have any advice for solving the problem except just being conscious of it and trying to avoid scenarios where you're falling off the outside of the board.

Enjoy - I think the feeling of foiling with a wing is far more enjoyable than the feeling of foiling with a sail.

As has been noted above, if you're learning, some of the things above will become more relevant later in the journey.
Get a biggish board. You're better to be 10 litres too big than 10 litres too small when learning. It will make your time above water easier and you'll learn faster. After a year, you might think of downsizing to the right board.
Biggest thing for me was gybing. Always switched my feet when dead downwind on windsurf board. Big no-no on foil. Could not break the habit. So learned how to ride toeside first, then went into gybes toeside exiting heelside without feeling like my feet were wrongly placed. Toeside is hard to learn, so find smooth water so that the chop interferes less with foil control. Narrow your stance before doing the foot swap. Wide stance tends to mean when back foot goes to the front, the board tends to dive harder and it's more difficult to keep it from touching down.
Also, don't think about footstraps. While getting your basic skills down pat, you often need to shuffle your feet around and I found they just get in the way. Clean board to begin. When you advance, then think about where they need to be. If you are struggling with foot placement and use the footstraps as location markers, then put something on your board (electrical tape, non permanent marker) to located your feet.
Good luck with the journey. It's fantastic and challenging.

Next question. Why do I suck at toe side gybe stability... on WindFoil I gybe toe-side all the time but switch feet mid-turn to finish heel side.
On the wing the second half of the turn is where I struggle. early days but any tips appreciated.

As Jeroensurf said when windsurf foiling, the fact that the mast is connected to the mid-front of the board takes out the rotational axis and pitch axis instability, it damps it all massively. On a windfoil that's all in your feet, much more delicate control is needed.

You'll get it, when I started, and as you know, come from the same racing 'IQ foil' style background as you I had the same issues but over a few sessions you'll figure out the more neuanced control required, just take practice to learn that new muscle memory. Foil setup is also important but from memory you had an F4 setup so it's probably good already.

Despite so so so many posters on here suggesting it to new wingfoilers, particularly those with deep rooted windsurfing backgrounds, to remove the straps I think is actually a ridiculous idea. I listened to that advice when I started, despite my better judgement and literally foiled like 100m and went, this is the stupidest idea i've ever heard of, went straight back in, put the front straps on and have never looked back. Having straps, the front ones only to start, makes so much of a difference to the control, foot placement and general consistency when wingfoiling I honestly don't know why people would not use them....particularly if you come from a very high level of windfoiling and windsurfing. I can understand it if you're just crusing around on a massive foil at like 12kts just 'feeling the flow' but if you want to progress bigtime, you need straps, imo.

I would also practice toe side riding both sides, a lot. It's an important skill, much more important in wingfoiling that in windfoil as you really need to be able to do it well once you progress to foiling tacks etc. There are so many videos on learning to gybe on youtube and that's the best way as a video is much easier to digest than a description on here. They highlight how imporant the wing switch timing is when you're starting etc...and you need flat water too at the start, makes it much easier.

I think your first post with the 4 points of advice was basically perfect dieseagull, describes the learning process most go through. My main thing with straps is it provides much more control and also much more consistency. Putting your front foot in the same place every time is the only real way to build the muscle memory when you are beginning, otherwise the foil forces are likely different almost everytime make it very hard to build that muscle memory. Also give Berowne's background it's one less thing to have to think about given how used he is to them.

I also don't really understand why anyone would sacrifice the added control with straps and for what benifit? Maybe it's just because I come from a racing background etc so like to go fast and as such generally foil on high aspect foils....and cruising around and 20+kts with straps is sketchy enough, let alone without them? I can kinda see it if you come from a surfing background or something where straps are completely foreign but if you've done any high level of windsurfing or kitesurfing, surely it's a no brainer?