There exist several techniques for the measurement of directional ocean wave spectra. The most conventional technique is the employment of pitch-roll buoys but a disadvantage of this technique is that it measures at a fixed point. Another promising technique is the use of airborne or spaceborne radars. We present here results of a comparison between the data from an airborne radar, which is measuring near vertical incidence, and measurements of directional wave spectra obtained by means of a pitch-roll buoy and processed by using the Long-Hasselmann iterative algorithm. Although preliminary, these results constitute a step towards the employment of the airborne radar based on the Radar Ocean Wave Spectrometer (ROWS) principle as defined by Jackson (1981), as a validation tool for spaceborne synthetic aperture radars.