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I have a Polar FS1 which most of the time works fine.

But quite often when I go for my routine walk around the block (4.4k at a steady 6 k/h or so) it will suddenly give crazy readings - jumping up by 50 or more beats per minute and then correcting itself. The beeps are also sometimes irregular (beep......beepbeep......beep..............beep.... etc). I am quite sure that  my heart is not behaving as indicated!

One possibility is that under dry windy conditions, the water I apply to the chest strap as per the instructions is drying out.

Apart from walking faster in order to generate more perspiration, is there any conductive "gel" that can be applied to the chest strap to maintain better contact (or does it not work this way) ? 

rastus 

Hi Rastus,

There is a gel (I can't remember the name though!) but I don't think that's your problem. Sometimes the monitors can jump around but it's only for short periods (eg 5-10sec). I'm not sure about the model you have, but the heart rate monitors don't always go by each individual heart beat. Instead they actually take the number of beats over a period of time (eg. 4-5sec) then estimate what it would be for a minute.

Ray

just an idea, but do you pass under power lines? electric train lines?

somedays they send my watch nuts

Thanks m0rgan for the suggestion. That idea had occurred to me as some of the streets around here have "high voltage" lines up above the regular power lines. Occasionally I get bad interference on my car radio which I believe can be caused by dirty insulators or something. But I do not think this is the cause of my HRM problem because it has sometimes misbehaved even inside my house which is a couple of hundred meters back from the road and well separated from all neighboring houses and other buildings. (I am on an acreage property).

By shaving a bit of chest hair and wetting the contact areas thoroughly things seem to be a bit better. I could try using a salt solution which hopefully would not do any damage to the chest strap sensors.

 rastus

i just use some spit to get my sensors wet, and then once sweating i dont have any contact problems

i have had problems with the strap moving before the sweat takes over the contact, i fixed this by tightening the strap up an inch

you can buy electrode gel designed for the monitors for about $10 a bottle , www.pursuit-performance.com.au or  www.heartshop.com.au would be good places to try 

ergh someone put the curse on my heart rate monitor

10 minutes into my run this morning, the low battery message comes up, and then it resets

bugger!