BALLOON STILL ALOFT, RECORD ABOUT TO FALL.

Byline: Malcolm W. Browne The New York Times

The Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon was less than one day's flying time Friday night from achieving what had thwarted balloonists for two centuries: a nonstop voyage around the world.

The big balloon's pilots - Dr. Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist, and Brian Jones, a British balloonist - radioed a message to their ground crew headquarters at Geneva Airport that for the first time during their 19 days aloft, they had begun to relax. It appeared virtually certain that they would accomplish their goal.

The balloon team's meteorologists forecast that the balloon, now over the Atlantic after crossing Europe, Asia, the Pacific Ocean and Central America, would arrive over the western Sahara early this morning. Forecasters said that by about 2 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (6 a.m. PST) today, the balloon would reach 9 degrees west longitude, achieving the global circumnavigation that began in the Swiss Alps.

But Alan Noble, the flight director of the project, said at a news conference here Friday night that the balloon might have enough fuel to continue on to Egypt, perhaps even to a landing near the Pyramids at Giza.

``Brian would love to land at that impressive place, and we would like it too, because there's a good network of roads in the Nile Valley, and that would help us reach the landing site quickly,'' Noble said.

At least 20 attempts by balloonists to circle Earth have been made in the past decade alone, and all but this one fell far short. Besides a place in the record books, the two balloonists will stand to claim a $1 million prize and the Budweiser Cup offered by Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co. to the first balloonists to circle the world nonstop.

Piccard disclosed in his radio message Friday that on Thursday he and Jones had come to believe that they too would fail and would be forced to make a landing at sea near the coast of Belize before heading out over the Atlantic Ocean.

``The wind was slow and blowing in the wrong direction,'' he said. ``We were cold, very tired, and feeling sick. Nothing was going right.

But then Piccard, who had been unable to sleep for days at a time, used a technique of auto-hypnosis he had developed while practicing psychiatry to put himself to sleep for a while. The two men's spirits began to pick up.

The Breitling Orbiter 3 is the third balloon sponsored by the Breitling watch-making company. All three were built by a British company, Cameron Balloons Ltd., and piloted by Piccard. The first, on Jan. 12, 1997, was forced to land after only a few hours' flight because of a kerosene leak in the crew capsule. The second balloon, in February 1998, ran out of fuel and had to land in Myanmar after setting a new balloon endurance record.

This time, more experienced and helped by some technical improvements, Piccard shattered all endurance and distance records.

Speaking by radio to a hundred or more news correspondents assembled here, Piccard apologized for having disclosed few details of the trip during the past three weeks.

``During the first two attempts, it became clear to us that we would not succeed, so we relaxed and had time to answer questions and radio photographs to the ground,'' he said. ``But this time we knew we had a good chance of making it, so we never let up.''

Piccard, 41, is the son and grandson of two other breakers of historic records. His grandfather, Auguste Piccard, also a medical doctor, was the first balloonist to reach the stratosphere in a pressurized crew capsule. He was also the builder of the Bathyscaphe, a man-carrying submersible capable of reaching great ocean depths.

Bertrand Piccard's father, Jacques Piccard, set a depth record in the Bathyscaphe, descending 35,815 feet to the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific, the greatest depth ever reached.

Friday night, the Breitling balloon was cruising eastward some 34,000 feet high in the core of a jet stream carrying it along at about 100 mph. Piccard said he did not foresee further problems.

The Breitling balloon, like most of its recent competitors in the round-the-world race, is a hybrid type called a Rozier, which gains lift from both helium and hot air. At night, when the air cools, the helium also cools and contracts, losing lift. But burners fueled by propane or kerosene are used to heat air and thus make up for the deficit in helium lift.

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PHOTO (Color) The Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon took off from the Alpine village of Chateau-D'Oex in Switzerland on March 1.

Fabrice Coffrini/Associated Press