fred wrote:

I start the sds drill in normal non hammer mode and switch to hammer
action once I have a start on the hole.

My extremely-cheapo SDS drill (bought for a specific non-precision job and
not much used since) goes automatically into hammer mode if you apply a
particular amount of pressure against the work. It doesn't (unless I've
looked straight past it) have a hammer on/off switch. Is that unusual?

Bert