Rocket jumping works best backwards, but you can do it pretty well facing forwards too. Pay close attention to the angle you shoot the rocket at, because it'll affect your trajectory. You can use this to your advantage and to your disadvantage.

As far as basic techniques go, start without doing anything fancy. Point straight down, jump, and shoot right after. Learn to time shooting the rocket to help control how high you go. I can't help much here, because it's very much a matter of feel. Just do it over and over for 10 minutes or so to get a feel for it.

Next, when you have some basic control there, learn to duck right after you jump. This will make a tremendous difference in how high and far you can get. Again, this is something that is a matter of practice and timing, and you need to practice it to gain a real feel for it.

Once you have the ducking part down, which isn't that tough once you have the basics, then practice shooting behind yourself or off to the side more - if you shoot behind yourself, and duck when you jump, and get the angle and timing just right, you can launch yourself almost as well as a demoman doing a pipe jump. A more sideways rocket jump can be used to great tactical advantage.

I find that most soldiers don't rocket jump nearly enough. The loss in health is very frequently massively offset by the tactical advantage you get in flying through the air, particularly against demomen.

There's a map called BBall. It's a basketball court, and everyone needs to play a soldier. The game is played by grabbing the flag and rocket jumping in to the "net". It is fantastic practice for rocket jumping, though you'll get schooled at first, it's very fun. Once you get good, you can actually get something like 3/4 across the court in one rocket jump.

The biggest thing is practice, practice, practice. I can't teach you the timing over here, you need to get that in to muscle memory yourself.
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See my avatar? You might guess I quite like team fortress 2, though I normally play heavy, I spend plenty of time as a scout, demo, soldier, and medic.

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