ZS8M: terrain profile toward nord Italy

Very few the times I could hear Pierre ZS8M from Marion Island, and always with very weak signals.
It's quite odd because south Africa is easy readable here in Nord Italy, but this is not the case of ZS8M.
recently I read an interesting article on DXCoffee so I decided to check what is the terrain profile toward north Italy.
In the picture below you can see what ZS8M can see out of his window in the north direction.



And this is the terrain profile beaming at 340 degrees: as you can see he has a 80 m. high hills at a distance of 1.4 km.



So, the location doesn't seem so favourable to working him from north Italy.... but I will try again in the next days.