HUD panel is deallocating itself after close

FROM : Sam Krishna
DATE : Wed Apr 02 07:12:47 2008

(Leopard 10.2.5, x86)

As a simple project, I'm trying to implement a HUD panel inside of the 
TextEdit codebase. The HUD panel is in a separate nib ("HUD.nib") that 
has it's own controller which is separate from the File's Owner class.

I have two classes:

(1) Launcher.[hm] --- this is the File's Owner class.
(2) HUDControlller.[hm]

I've re-wired the "Find..." sub-menu item to launch the panel when 
firing showFindPanel:

The HUD panel opens successfully the first time when I use Cmd-F to 
"find" something. However, when I close the panel and try to re-open 
it, the system acts as if the panel has inadvertently been freed. 
Here's the backtrace:

--------
Current language:  auto; currently objective-c
Program received signal:  “EXC_BAD_ACCESS”.
(gdb) bt
#0  0x906176e8 in objc_msgSend ()
#1  0x0001b142 in -[PanelController showFindPanel:] (self=0x143c4d30, 
_cmd=0x1fdf8, sender=0x135530) at /Volumes/elyon/achilles/Projects/
Regex/Prototypes/TextEdit/PanelController.m:30
#2  0x0001b322 in -[Detector showFindPanel:] (self=0x135530, 
_cmd=0x1fdf8, sender=0x12f6c0) at /Volumes/elyon/achilles/Projects/
Regex/Prototypes/TextEdit/Detector.m:136
#3  0x9188fe56 in -[NSApplication sendAction:to:from:] ()
#4  0x9193e7cc in -[NSMenu performActionForItemAtIndex:] ()
#5  0x9193e4d1 in -[NSCarbonMenuImpl 
performActionWithHighlightingForItemAtIndex:] ()
#6  0x9193e157 in -[NSMenu performKeyEquivalent:] ()
#7  0x9193c9fd in -[NSApplication _handleKeyEquivalent:] ()
#8  0x91859b36 in -[NSApplication sendEvent:] ()
#9  0x917b70f9 in -[NSApplication run] ()
#10 0x9178430a in NSApplicationMain ()
#11 0x00016985 in main (argc=1, argv=0xbffff6b0) at
------

For the record, the code isn't doing anything special. All I did was 
re-wire the main menu's Find->Find...  submenu item to my Launcher 
class in the Edit.nib file. I then used NSBundle to load the secondary 
xib, set the File's Owner of the 2nd xib to Launcher, and had it point 
to the HUDController, which in turn performs -makeKeyAndOrderFront: on 
the HUD Panel when using Cmd-F.

Any ideas?

Sam