Now where's that runway?

During one of my lessons this is what happened as we were taxiing out to runway 28, which was the active.

I made my call to the tower to get the airport advisory, tower came back with an aircraft in the circuit that would be landing in about 5 minutes. Since it was going to take us a few minutes to taxi out to the active I called tower back and told them that I'd taxi Alpha, Charlie, Runway 21 to the hold short line for Runway 28 to wait for traffic. Since our tower is actually a "radio" you as PIC tell them what your going to do and then they let you know if that sounds good, usually with a "copy that".

As we were taxing out, there was some chatter back and forth between the aircraft in the circuit and the tower, the pilot obviously wasn't very comfortable talking on the radio. It sounded like he started talking and then was trying to figure out what he wanted to say as he went along. The next thing we hear is the aircraft announce that they were on final for 28. I looked over from our postion on taxiway charlie and couldn't see him, which left me wondering if I missed something. Maybe he called really late and was already down, in which case I'd not be able to see him at the far end of 28 due to the layout of the airport. Tower quickly came back and informed the pilot that they were actually on final for 03! My instructor and I said WTF at basically the same time, we both turned around and then confirmed for ourselves that this was actually the case.

The pilot came back with a quick sorry and then pulled up and turned right in search of runway 28. Dave and I just looked at each other and then I asked him if I had heard that right, Dave replied, "yep". We then had some interesting dialogue back and forth about how a pilot could mix up the heading of the runway by 110 degrees, let alone not see the big numbers on the end of the runway as they were on final!

We then watched them as they kept turning to intersect runway 28's base leg, then they polished things off with a nice three bounce landing. A couple of minutes later we were on runway 03 holding short of 28 as they taxied by. Normally we'd all give a quick wave as the other aircraft taxied by, but the pilot refused to look our way...

This has taught me a very valuable lesson, no matter what you hear on the radio while in the circuit, never take it a face value, always confirm it with your eyes. I'm still shaking my head at this one...